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SPEECHES 



by y 

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, 

M 
AUTHOR OF "THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMBS 
THE SECOND," "LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME," "ESSAYS FROM 
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW," ETC., ETC. 



IN TWO VOLUMES. 
VOL, I. 



-- 



NEW YORK: 
HURST & CO., Publishers, 



ok 




PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 



Francis, ihe author of a collection of portraits of con- 
temporary statesmen, entitled the Orators of the Age, 
lias in veil in that work a sketch of the Parliamentary 
manner and successes of Macaulay. He claims for him 
the first rank of the speakers of the day — no less for 
the literary and historical illustrations of his speeches, 
than for their fidelity to the immediate interests of the 
discussion. In the union of these two qualities may be 
summed up Macaulay's characteristic merits. " He is a 
great reconciler of the new with the old. Although lie 
may adorn a subject with the lights afforded by his rare 
genius, he never trifles with it. His historical research 
renders him a living link with the old and uncorrupted 
constitution of the country. * * There is no speaker now 
before the public who so readily and usefully, and with 
so little appearance of effort, infuses the results of very 
extensive reading and very deep research into the com- 
mon, every day business of Parliament. But his learn- 
ing never tyrannizes over his common sense. "* The 

* Francis's Orators of the Age. 



political liberality and principle of free development, 
the honorable and humanitarian spirit of these speeches 
are as obvious. 

The following speeches, which are now for the first 
time brought together, are reprinted in a connected and 
complete series from the standard authority, Hansard's 
Parliamentary Debates. They embrace the whole of the 
distinguished orator's course in the House of Commons, 
from 1830 to the present day. Among them will be 
found in due chronological order, the several speeches 
on the Reform Bill, which brought the orator so promi- 
nently forward in the arena of the House of Commons 
and before the world, in his vindication of the exten- 
sion of the suffrage and the principles of representation, 
supported by every resource of wit, skilful argument, 
ingenuity of detail, and historical precedent, including 
those memorable passages on the lessons of the French 
and English Revolutions ; the discussion of questions 
growing out of the agitations iri Ireland in 1833, and 
later, the measures of repression, the reform of the Pro- 
testant Church Establishment, the Maynooth College 
Bill ; his eloquent review of the East India policy, which 
recalls the triumphs of Burke ; his Copyright speeches, 
in which he places literary property on the ground of 
expediency ; his views on the Corn Laws, the Ballot, 
the Charter petition, the Dissenters' Chapel Bill ; his 
remarks on the Treaty of Washington ; with many dis- 
cussions incidental to these and other important topics, 
springing up during his Parliamentary career. 

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born in 1800. In 
1818 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, obtaining 



PREFACE. t 

a fellowship of that college in 1824. He then became 
a law student at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the 
bar in 1826. At this period he laid the foundation 
of his literary fame by his celebrated articles in the 
Edinburgh Review (one of the earliest of which, a paper 
on the Reform Question, is printed in the present 
volumes), having previously given some brilliant poems 
and sketches to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. We find 
him in 1830 in Parliament under the nomination system, 
sitting for the Marquis of Lansdowne's borough of Calne 
before the Reform Bill. He was elected member for 
Leeds in 1833, but soon resigned his seat to proceed 
to India as member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta, 
where he was at the head of the Commission for the 
Reform of East India Legislation. In 1838 he returned 
to England, and shortly afterwards was elected member 
for Edinburgh. In 1839 he joined the Cabinet as Secre- 
tary at War, supporting the Whig cause by some of hi? 
most vigorous speeches. His course in the advocacy of 
the Maynooth Grant probably lost him his election at 
Edinburgh in 1847. He was installed Rector of the 
'University of Glasgow in 1849, and re-elected to 
Parliament in 1852. In 1848 appeared the first two 
volumes of his celebrated History of England. The 
third and fourth were published in 1855, and Vol. 5, a 
fragment, was issued after his death in 1861. He died 
Dec. 28, 1859, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. 

As some curiosity may be felt in this connexion to 
know something of Macaulay's personal manner as a 
speaker, we may add that, Mr. Francis describes his 
voice as " monotonous, pitched in alto, shrill, pouring 



forth words with inconceivable velocity — a voice well 
adapted to give utterance with precision to the conclu- 
sions of the intellect, but in no way naturally formed 
to express feeling or passion. ' r His face is described as 
" literally instinct with expression : the eye, above all, 
full of deep thought and meaning." In stature, he is 
short and stout. 

Macaulay must always be listened to and read with 
pleasure, for the brilliant light he constantly throws 
upon his object, whatever its character. Passing over his 
great efforts in the following collection, we may refer 
for an example of the force of picturesque treatment, 
condensing and illuminating the argument, to the very 
neat little casual speech on the Anatomy Bill, with its 
prompt disposition of the comparative interests of rich 
and poor in the question. It shows how a man of 
genius may give value to every occasion. 



CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 



I OB 



English Politic? in 1827. From the Edinburgh Review for January, 

1827 8 

State of Parties. (A Sequel to the Preceding.) From the Edinburgh 

Review for October, 1827 4( 

Speech in "the House of Commons, on the "Bill to Repeal the Civil 
Disabilities affecting British-born Subjects professing the Jewish 
Religion." April 5, 1830 63 

Slavery in the West Indies. On the Presentation of a Petition of 
West India Planters, and others interested in Property in the 
West Indies. December 13, 1830 ?i 

Parliamentary Reform. In the Adjourned Debate on the Motion, 
"that leave be given to bring in a Bill to Amend the Representa- 
tion of the People of England and Wales." March 2, 1831 . 75 

Parliamentary Reform. On the Adjourned Debate on the Second 
Reading of Lord John Russell's Parliamentary Reform Bill for 
Ireland. July 5, 1831 93 

Parliamentary Reform. On the Third Reading of the Reform Bill for 

England. September 20, 1831 105 

State of the Nation. October 10, 1831 ... . 121 

Parliamentary Reform. December 16, 1831 132 

The Anatomy Bill. February 27, 1832 148 

Parliamentary Reform. The Bill for England, Committee, Seven- 
teenth Day. February 28, 1832 151 

Parliamentary Reform. On the Third Reading of the Bill — for Eng- 
land. March 19, 1S32 160 

The Resignation of Ministers. May 10, 1832 176 

Slavery iq the Colonies- May 2-1, 1832 187, 



Vlli C0NTENT8. 

PA«»B 

The Russian-Dutch Loan. July 12, 18S2 . . . . .191 

The Affairs of the Country. February 6, 1833 200 

The Disturbances (Ireland) Bill. February 28, 1833 . . v , . 217 

Church Reform, Ireland. April 1, 1833 . . . . . 230 

The East-India Company's Charter Bill. July 10, 1833 . . . 242 

Ministerial Plan for the. Abolition of Slavery. July 24, 1833 . .282 

The Ballot. June 18, 1839 291 

Confidence in the Ministry. January 29, 1840 ... 309 

Vote of Thanks to the Indian Army. February 6, 1840 . . . 332 

Privilege — Stockdale v. Hansard — Bill to secure Publication. March 6, 

1840 835 

The Army Estimates. March 9, 1840 343 

The War with China. April 7, 1840 ... . . 354 

Colonial Passengers' Bill. June 4, 1840 373 

Registration of Voters — Ireland. June 19, 1840 , . 377 

Copyright Bill. February 5, 1841 ... , . gg? 



MACAULAY'S SPEECHES. 



ENGLISH POLITICS IN 1827.* 

The New Antijacobin Review. — Nos. I. and II. 8vo. Vndon. 
1827. 

We ought to apologize to our readers for prefixing to this article 
the name of such a publication. The two numbers which lie on 
our table contain nothing which could be endured, even at a 
dinner of the Pitt Club, unless, as the newspapers express it, the 
hilarity had been continued to a very late hour. We have met, 
we confess, with nobody who has ever seen them ; and, should oui 
account excite any curiosity respecting them, we fear that an 
application to the booksellers wiil already be too late. Some 
tidings of them may perhaps be obtained from the trunk-makers. 
In order to console our readers, however, under this disappoint- 
ment, we will venture to assure them, that the only subject on 
which the reasonings of these Antijacobin Reviewers throw any 
light, is one in which we take very little interest — the state of 
their own understandings • and that the onlv feeling which theii 

* From the Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1S27. 

Note. This article and the following one, which have not been collected 
in the edition of Macaulay's Edinburgh Review articles, are here printed 
as an appropriate introduction of the celebrated Speeches on the Reform 
Bill, to several of the leading points of which they offer no slight resem- 
blances. 

I* 



10 English PoLrrics is 1 827. 

pathetic appeals have excited in us, is that of deep regret for out 
four shillings, which are gone and will return no more. 

It is not a very cleanly, or a very agreeable task, to rake up 
from the kennels of oblivion the remains of drowned abortions, 
which have never opened their eyes on the day, or even been 
heard to whimper, but have been at once transferred from the filth 
in which they were littered, to the filth with which they are to rot. 
But unhappily we have no choice. Bad as this work is, it ia 
quite as good as any which has appeared against the present 
administration. We have looked everywhere, without being able 
to find any antagonist who can possibly be as much ashamed of 
defeat as we shall be of victory. 

The manner in which the influence of the press has, at this 
crisis, been exercised, is, indeed, very remarkable. All the talent 
has been on one side. With an unanimity which, as Lord 
Londonderry wisely supposes, can be ascribed only to a dexterous 
ise of the secret-service money, the able and respectable journals 
Df the metropolis have all supported the new government. It has 
been attacked, on the other hand, by writers who make every 
3ause which they espouse despicable or odious, — by one paper 
which owes all its notoriety to its reports of the slang uttered by 
drunken lads who are brought to Bow Street for breaking; windows 
— by another, which barely contrives to subsist on intelligence 
from butlers, and advertisements from perfumers. With these are 
joined all the scribblers who rest their claim to orthodoxy and 
loyalty on the perfection to which they have carried the arts of 
ribaldry and slander. What part these gentlemen would take in 
the present contest, seemed at first doubtful. We feared, for a 
moment, that their servility might overpower their malignity, and 
that they would be even more inclined to flatter the powerful than 
to calumniate the innocent. It turns out that we were mistaken ; 
and we are most thankful for it. They have been kind enough to 
spare us the discredit of their alliance. We know not how we 



ENGLISH POLITICS IX 1827. 11 

should have borne to be of the same party with them. Tt is bad 
enough, God knows, to be of the same species. 

The writers of the book before us, who are also, we believe, tfvj 
great majority of its readers, can scarcely be said to belong to this 
class. They rather resemble those snakes with which Indian 
jugglers perform so many curious tricks : The bags of venom 
are left, but the teeth are extracted. That they might omit 
nothing tending to make them ridiculous, they have adopted a 
title on which no judicious writer would have ventured ; and 
challenged comparison with one of the most ingenious and amus- 
ing volumes in our language. Whether they have assumed this 
name on the principle which influenced Mr. Shandy in christening 
his children, or from a whim similar to that which induced the 
proprietors of the most frightful Hottentot that ever lived, to give 
her the name of Venus, we shall not pretend to decide ; but we 
would seriously advise them to consider, whether it is for their 
interest, that people should be reminded of the celebrated imita- 
tions of Darwin and Kotzebue, while they are reading such 
parodies on the Bible as the following : — " In those days, a strange 
person shall appear in the land, and lie shall cry to the people, 
Heboid, I am possessed by the Demon of Ultra-Liberalism ; I 
have received the gift of incoherence ; I am a political philosopher, 
and a professor of paradoxes." 

We would also, with great respect, ask the gentleman who has 
lampooned Mr. Canning in such Drydenian couplets as this— 

" When he said if they would V'ut let him in. 
He would never iry to turn them out again," 

whether his performance gains much by being compared with 
New Morality ? and, indeed, whether such satire as this is likely 
to make anybody laugh but himself, or to make anybody wine* 
but bis publisher? , 



12 ENGLISH POLITICS IN 1827. 

But we must take leave of the New Aniijacobin Review ; and 
we do so, hoping that we have secured the gratitude of its 
conductors. We once heard a schoolboy relate, with evident 
satisfaction and pride, that he had been horsewhipped by a Duke: 
we trust -that our present condescension will be as highly ap- 
preciated. 

Hut it is not for the purpose of making a scarecrow of a 
ridiculous publication, that we address our readers at the present 
important crisis. We are convinced, that the cause of the present 
Ministers is the cause of liberty, the cause of toleration, the cause 
ef political science, — the cause of the people, who are entitled to 
expect from their wisdom and liberality many judicious reforms, — 
the cause of the aristocracy, who, unless those reforms be adopted, 
must inevitablv be the victims of a violent and desolating revolu- 
tion. We are convinced, that the government of the country was 
never intrusted to men who more thoroughly understood its 
interest, or were more sincerely disposed to promote it — to men 
who, in forming their arrangements, thought so much of what 
they could do, and so little of what they could get. On the other 
side, we see a party which, for ignorance, intemperance, and incon- 
sistency, has no parallel in our annals, — which, as an Opposition, 
we really think, is a scandal to the nation, and, as a Ministry, 
would speedily be its ruin. Under these circumstances, we think 
it our duty to give our best support to those with whose power are 
inseparably bound up all the dearest interests of the community,— 
the freedom of worship, of discussion, and of trade, — our honou? 
abroad, and our tranquillity at home. 

In undertaking the defence of the Ministers, we feel ourselves 
embarrassed by one difficulty : we are unable to comprehend 
distinctly of what they are accused. A statement of facts may :>e 
contradicted ; but the gentlemen of the Opposition do not deal in 
statements. Reasonings may be refuted ; but the gentlemen of 
tfce Opposition 4° not loasow, T&ere is southing impassjv§ mi 



ENGLISH POLITICS IN 1827. 13 

elastic about their dulness, on which all the weapons of controversy 
are thrown away. It makes no resistance, and receives no im- 
pression. To argue with it, is like stabbing the water, or 
cudgelling a woolpack. Buonaparte is said to have remarkedi 
that the English soldiers at Waterloo did not know when they 
were beaten. The Duke of Wellington, equally fortunate in 
politics and in war, has the rare felicity of being supported a 
second time by a force of this description, — men whose desperate 
nardihood in argument sets all assailants at defiance, — who fight 
on, though borne down on every side by overwhelming proofs, 
rush enthusiastically into the mouth of an absurdity, or stake 
themselves with cool intrepidity on the horn of a dilemma. W T e 
doubt whether this unconquerable pertinacity be quite as honour- 
able in debate as in battle; but we are sure, that it is a very 
difficult task for persons trained in the old school of logical tactics 
to contend with antagonists who possess such a quality. 

The species of argument in which the members of the Oppo- 
sition appear chiefly to excel, is that of which the Marquis, in the 
Critique de VEcole des Fcmmes, showed himself so great a master: 
— "Tarte a la creme — morbleu, tarte a la creme!" "He bien, 
que veux tu dire, tarte a ta creme?" "Parbleu, tarte a la creme, 
chevalier!" " Mais encore VI "Tarte a la creme!" Di-nous uu 
peu tes raisons." " Tarte a la creme !" " Mais il faut expliquer ta 
pensee, ce me semble." " Tarte a la creme, Madam." " Que 
trouvez-vouz la a redire?" " Moi, rien ;— tarte a la creme!" 
With equal taste and judgment, the writers and speakers of the 
Opposition repeat their favourite phrases — " deserted principles," 
u unnatural coalition," " base love of office." They have not, we 
must allow, been unfortunate in their choice of a topic. The 
English are but too much accustomed to consider every public 
virtue as comprised in consistency ; and the name of coalition has 
(0 many ears a startling an4 QmWQUS §QU»d. Of all the charges 



14 ENGLISH POLITICS IN 1827. 

brought against the Ministry, this alone, as far we can discover, 
lias any meaning; and even to this we can allow no force. 

To condemn coalitions in the abstract, is manifestly absurd : 
Since in a popular government, no good can be done without 
concert, and no concert can be obtained without compromise 
Those who will not stoop to compliances which the condition of 
human nature renders necessary, are fitter to be hermits than to 
be statesmen. Their virtue, like gold which is too refined to .be 
coined, must be alloyed before it can be of any use in the commerce 
of society. But most peculiarly inconsistent and unreasonable is 
the conduct of those who, while they profess strong Party-feelings 
yet entertain a superstitious aversion to Coalitions. Every ar- 
gument which can be urged against coalitions, as such, is also an 
argument against party connexions. Every argument by which 
party connexions can be defended, is a defence of coalitions. 
What coalitions are to parties, parties are to individuals. The 
members of a party, in order to promote some great common 
object, consent to waive all subordinate considerations : — That 
they may co-operate with more effect where they agree, they 
contrive, by reciprocal concession, to preserve the semblance of 
unanimity, even where they differ. Men are not thought unprin- 
cipled for acting thus; because it is evident that without such 
mutual sacrifices of individual opinions, no government can be 
formed, nor any important measures carried, in a world of which 
the inhabitants resemble each other so little, and depend on each 
other so much, —in which there are as many varieties of mind as of 
countenance, yet in which great effects can be produced only by 
combined exertions. We must extend the same indulgence to a 
coalition between parties. 'If they agree on every important prac- 
tical question, if they differ only about objects which are either 
insignificant or unattainable, no party man can, on his own 
principles, blame them for. uniting. These doctrines, like all othei 



ENGLiStl POLITICS IN 1827. 15 

doctrines, may be pushed to extremes by the injudicious, or 
employed by the designing as a pretext for profligacy. But that 
they are not in themselves unreasonable or pernicious, the whole 
history of our country proves. 

The Revolution itself was the fruit of a coalition between parties, 
which had attacked each other with a fury unknown in later times. 
In the preceding generation their hostility had covered England 
with blood and mourning. They had subsequently exchanged 
the sword for the axe : But their enmity was not the less deadly 
because it was disguised by the forms of justice. By popular 
clamour, by infamous testimony, by perverted law, they had shed 
innocent and noble blood like water. Yet all their animosities 
were forgotten in the sense of their common danger. Whigs and 
Tories signed the same associations. Bishops and field-preachers 
thundered out the same exhortations. The doctors of Oxford and 
the goldsmiths of London sent in their plate with equal zeal. The 
administration which, in the reign of Queen Anne, defended 
Holland, rescued Germany, conquered Flanders, dismembered the 
monarchy of Spain, shook the throne of France, vindicated the in- 
dependence of Europe, and established the empire of the sea, was 
formed by a junction between men who had many political contests 
and many personal injuries to forget. Somers had been a member 
of the ministry which had sent Marlborough to the Tower. Marl- 
borough had assisted in harassing Somers bv a vexatious im- 
peach ment. But would these great men have acted wisely or 
honourably if, on such grounds, they had refused to serve their 
country; in concert? The Cabinet which conducted the seven 
years' war with such distinguished ability and success, was com- 
posed of members who had a short time before been leaders of 
opposite parties. The Union between Fox and North is, we own, 
condemned by that argument which it will never be possible to 
answer in a manner satisfactory to the great body of mankind, — 
the argument from the event. But we should feel some surprise at 



16 ENOLlSfl POLITICS IK 182?. 

the dislike which some zealous Pittites affect to entertain foi 
coalitions, did we not know that a Pittite means, in the phraseolo- 
gy of the present day, a person who differs from Mr. Pitt on 
every subject of importance. There are, indeed, two Pitts, — the 
real and the imaginary, — the Pitt of history, a Parliaments? y 
reformer, (an enemy of the Test and Corporation Acts,) an advocate 
of Catholic Emancipation and of free trade, — and the canonized 
Pitt of the legend, — as unlike to his namesake as Virgil the 
magician to Virgil the Poet, or St. James the slayer of Moors to St- 
James the fisherman. What may have been the opinions of that 
unreal being whose birth-day is celebrated by libations to Protes- 
tant Ascendency, on the subject of coalitions, we leave it to hiw 
veracious hagiographers, Lord El don and Lord Westmoreland, to 
determine. The sentiments of the real Mr. Pitt may be easily 
ascertained from his conduct. At the time of the revolutionary 
war he admitted to participation in his power those who had 
formerly been his most determined enemies. In 1804 he connected 
himself with Mr. Fox, and, on his return to office, attempted to 
procure a high situation in the government for his new ally. One 
more instance we will mention, which has little weight with us, but 
which ought to have much weight with our opponents. They 
talk of Mr. Pitt; — but the real object of their adoration is unques- 
tionably the late Mr. Percival, a gentleman whose acknowledged 
private virtues were but a poor compensation to his country for 
the narrowness and feebleness of his policy. In 1809 that minister 
offered to serve not only with Lord Grenville and Earl Grey, but 
even under them. No approximation of feeling between the 
members of the government and their opponents had then taken 
place: there had not even been the slightest remission of hos- 
tilities. On no question of foreign or domestic policy were the 
two parties agreed. Yet under such circumstances was this 
proposition made. It was, as might have been anticipated re- 
jected by the Whigs, and derided by the country. But the 



fiKeitisii politics is 1821. \1 

recollection of it ought certainly to prevent those who concuned 
in it, and their devoted followers, from talking of the baseness and 
selfishness of coalitions. 

These general reasonings, it may be said, are superfluous. It is 
not to coalitions in the abstract, but to the present coalition in 
particular, that objection is made. We answer, that an attack on 
the present coalition can only be maintained by succeeding in the 
most signal way in an attack on coalitions in the abstract. For 
never has the world seen, and never is it likely to see, a junction 
between parties agreeing on so many points, and differing on so 
few. The Whigs and the supporters of Mr. Canning were united 
in principle. They were separated only by names, by badges, and 
by recollections. Opposition, on such grounds as these, would 
have been disgraceful to English statesmen. It would have been as 
unreasonable and as profligate as the disputes of the blue and green 
factions in the Hippodrome of Constantinople. One man admires 
Mr. Pitt, and another Mr. Fox. Are they therefore never to act 
together? Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox were themselves willing to 
coalesce while they were alive ; and it would therefore be strange, 
if, after they have been lying for twenty years in Westminster 
Abbey, their names should keep parties asunder. One man 
approves of the revolutionary war. Another thinks it unjust and 
impolitic. But the war is over. It is now merely a matter of 
historical controversy. And the statesman who should require his 
colleagues to adopt his confession of faith respecting it, would act 
af madly as Don Quixote when he went to blows with Cardenio 
about the chastity of Queen Madasima. On these points, and on 
many such points as these, our new ministers, no doubt, hold 
different opinions. They may also, for aught we know, hold 
different opinions about the title of Perkin Warbeck, and the 
genuineness of the Ejxwv BatfiXwj. But we shall hardly, on such 
grounds as these, pronounce their union a sacrifice of principle tc 
place. 



t§ kNm.tstf roi.inrs in 182*. 

It is, in short, of very little importance whether the parti ife 
which have lately united entertain the same sentiments respecting 
things which have been done and cannot be undone. It is of aa 
little importance whether they have adopted the same speculative 
notions on questions which could not at present be brought 
forward with the slightest chance of success, and which, in all 
probability, they will never be required to discuss. The real 
questions are these : Do they differ as to the policy which present 
circumstances require? Or is any great cause, which they may 
have heretofore espoused, placed in a more unfavourable situation 
by their junction ? 

That this is the case, no person has even attempted to prove. 
Bold assertions have indeed been made by a class of writers, who 
seem to think that their readers are as completely destitute of 
memory as they themselves are of shame. For the last two years 
they have been abusing Mr. Canning for adopting the principles 
of the Whigs; and they now exclaim that, in joining Mr. Canning, 
the Whigs have abandoned all their principles ! " The Whigs," said 
one of their writers, but a few months ago, " are exercising more 
real power by means of the present Ministers than if they were 
themselves in office." u The Ministers," said another, " are no 
longer Tories. What thev call conciliation is mere Whiggism." 
A third obseived that the jest of Mr. Canning about Dennis and 
his thunder had lost all its point, and that it was a lamentable 
truth, that all the late measures of the government seemed to 
have been dictated by the Whigs. Yet these very authors have 
now the effrontery to assert that the Whigs could not possibly 
support Mr. Canning without renouncing every opinion which 
they had formerly professed. 

We confidently affirm, on the other hand, that no principle 
whatever has been sacrificed. With respect to our foreign relations 
and our commercial policy, the two parties have for years been 
perfectly agreed. On the Catholic question thb views of the 



ENGLISH POLITICS I.* 1827. IS 

Whigs are the same with those of a great majority of their new 
colleagues. It is true that, in an illustrious assembly, which was 
formerly suspected of great dulness and great decorum, and 
which has of late effectually redeemed itself from one half of the 
reproach, the conduct of the Whigs towards the Catholics has been 
represented in a very unfavourable light. The arguments employed 
against them belong, we suppose, to a kind of logic which the 
privileged orders alone are qualified to use, and which, with their 
other constitutional distinctions, we earnestly pray that they may 
long keep to themselves. An ingenious member of this assembly 
is said to have observed, that the Protestant alaimists were bound 
to oppose the new Ministers as friends to the Catholic cause, and 
that the Catholics ought to oppose them as traitors to the same 
cause, lie reminded the former of the infinite danger of trusting 
power to a Cabinet composed principally of persons favourable tc 
emancipation : and, at the same time, pointed the indignation of 
the latter against the perfidy of the pretended friends who had 
not stipulated that emancipation should be made a ministerial 
measure ! We cannot sufficiently admire the exquisite dexterity of 
an assailant who, in the same breath, blames the same people for 
doing, and for not doing the same thing. To ordinary plebeian 
understandings we should think it undeniable that the Catholic 
question must be now — either in the same situation in which it 
was before the late change; or it must have lost; or it must have 
gained. If it have gained, the Whigs are justified ; if it have lost, 
the enemies of the claims ought zealously to support the new 
government; if it be exactly where it was before, no person who 
acted with Lord Liverpool can, on this ground, consistently oppose 
Mr. Canning. 

In this view, indeed, the cause of the Whigs is the cause of the 
ministers who have seceded from the Cabinet. Both parties haNe 
put ir the same plea ; and both must be acquitted or condemned 



20 ENGLISH POLITICS IN 1827. 

tog-ether. If it be allowed that the elevation of Mr. Canning was 
not an event favourable to the Catholic cause, the Whigs will 
certainly stand convicted of inconsistency. But at the same time, 
*,he only argument by which the ex-Ministers have attempted to 
vindicate their secession, must fall to the ground ; and it will be 
iifh'eult to consider that proceeding in any other light than as 
a factious expedient to which they have resorted, in order to 
embarrass a colleague whom they envied. If, on the other hand, 
the effect of the late change were such, that it became the duty of 
those who objected to Catholic Emancipation, to decline all con- 
nexion with the Ministry, it must surely have become, at the same 
time, the duty of the friends of Emancipation to support the 
Ministry. Those who take the one ground, when their object is to 
vindicate the seceders, and the other, when their object is to 
blacken the Whigs, who, in the same speech, do not scruple to 
represent the Catholic cause as triumphant and as hopeless, may, 
we fear, draw down some ridicule on themselves, but will hardly 
convince the country. But why did not the Whigs stipulate that 
some proposition for the relief of the Catholics should be immedi- 
ately brought forward, and supported by the whole influence of the 
Administration ? We answer, simply because they could not 
obtain such conditions, and because, by insisting upon them, they 
would have irreparably injured those whom they meant to serve, 
and have thrown the government into the hands of men who 
would have employed all its power and patronage to support a 
system which, we do not scruple to say, is the shame of England, 
and the curse of Ireland. By the course which they have taken, 
they have insured to the sister kingdom every alleviation which 
its calamities can receive from the lenient administration of an 
oppressive system. Under their government, it will at least be no 
man's interest to espouse the side of bigotry. Truth will have a 
fajr ohmve against prejudice. And whenever the dislike with 



ENGLISH POLITICS Iff .1827. 21 

which the majority of the English people regard the Catholic 
claims shad have been overcome by discussion, no other obstacle 
will remain to be surmounted. 

The friends of the Catholics have, indeed, too long kept out of 
sight the real difficulty which impedes the progress of all measures 
for their relief. There has been a nervous reluctance — perhaps 
a natural unwillingness, to approach this subject. Yet it is of the 
utmost importance that it should at last be fully understood. The 
difficulty, we believe, is neither with the King nor with the Ca- 
binet, — neither with the Commons nor with the Lords. It is 
with the People of England ; and not with the corrupt, not with 
the servile, not with the rude and uneducated, not with the disso- 
lute and turbulent, but with the great body of the middling 
orders ; — of those who live in comfort, and have received some 
instruction. Of the higher classes, the decided majority is, beyond 
all dispute, with the Catholics. The lower classes care nothing at 
all about the question. It is among those whose influence is 
generally exerted for the most salutary purposes, — among those 
from whom liberal statesmen have, in general, received the 
strongest support, — among those who feel the deepest detestation 
of oppression and corruption, that erroneous opinions on this 
subject are most frequent. A faction with which they have no 
other feeling in common, has, on this question, repeatedly made 
them its tools, and hae diverted their attention more than once 
from its own folly and p/ofligacy, by raising the cry of No Popery. 
They have espoused their opinions, not from want of honesty, not 
from want of sense, but simply from want of information and 
reflection. They think as the most enlightened men in England 
thought seventy or eighty years ago. Pulteney and Pelham 
would no more have given political power to Papists than to 
ourang-outangs. A proposition for mitigating the severity of the 
penal laws would, in their time, have been received with suspicion. 
Th§ M\ discussion which the subject has sine© undergone, hag 



22 ENGLISH POLITICS IS 182*7. 

produced a cereal change. Among intelligent men in that rank of 
life from which our ministers and the members of our legislature 
are selected, the feeling in favour of concession is strong and 
general. But, unfortunately, sufficient attention has not been 
paid to a lower, but most influential and respectable class. The 
friends of the Catholic claims, content with numbering in their 
ranks all the most distinguished statesmen of two generations, 
proud of lists of minorities and majorities adorned by every name 
which commands the respect of the country, have not sufficiently 
exerted themselves to combat popular prejudices. Pamphlets 
against Emancipation are circulated, and no answers appear. 
Sermons are preached against it, and no pains are taken to oblite- 
rate the impression. The rector carries a petition round to every 
shopkeeper and every farmer in his parish, talks of Smithfield and 
the inquisition, Bishop Bonner and Judge Jeffries. No person 
takes the trouble to canvass on the other side. At an election, the 
candidate who is favonrable to the Catholic claims, is almost always 
content to stand on the defensive. He shrinks from the odium of 
a bold avowal. While his antagonist asserts and reviles, he 
palliates, evades, and distinguishes. He is unwilling to give a 
pledge : he has not made up his mind : he hopes that adequate 
securities for the Church may be obtained : he will wait to see how 
the Catholic States of South America behave themselves! And 
thus, as fast as he can, he gets away from the obnoxious subject, 
to retrenchment, reform, or negro slavery. If such a man succeeds, 
his vote does not benefit the Catholics half so much as his shuffling 
injures thorn. How can the people understand the question, when 
those whose business is to enlighten them, will not state it to them 
plainly ? Is it strange that they should dislike a cause of which 
almost all its advocates seem to be ashamed ? If, at the late 
election, all our public men who are favourable to Emancipation 
had dared to speak out, had introduced the subject of their own. 
accord, and discussed it day after day, they might have lost a few- 



ItfGttSH POLITICS IN [Ml. H 

Votes ; they might have been compelled to face a few dead cats ; 
but they would have put down the prejudice effectually. Five or 
six friends of the claims might have been unseated, but the claims 
would have been carried. 

The popular aversion to them is an honest aversion ; according 
to the measure of knowledge which the people possess, it is a just 
aversion. It has been reasoned down wherever the experiment 
has been fearlessly tried. It may be reasoned down everywhere. 
The war should be carried on in every quarter. No misrepresen- 
tation should be suffered to pass unrefuted. When a silly letter 
from Philo-Melancthon, or Anti-Doyle, about the Coronation Oath, 
or divided allegiance, makes its appearance in the corner of a 
provincial newspaper, it will not do merely to say " What stuff!" 
We must remember that such statements constantly reiterated, 
and seldom answered, will assuredly be believed. Plain, spirited, 
moderate treatises on the subject, should find their way into every 
cottage; — not such rancorous nonsense as that for which the 
Catholics formerly contracted with the fiercest and basest libeller 
of the age, the apostate politician, the fraudulent debtor, the 
ungrateful friend, whom England has twice spewed out to 
America ; whom America, though far from squeamish, has twice 
vomited back to England. They will not, they may be assured, 
serve their cause by pouring forth unmeasured abuse on men 
whose memory is justly dear to the hearts of a great people; — 
men mighty even in their weaknesses, and wise even in their 
fanaticism ; — the goodly fellowship of our reformers, — the noble 
army of our martyrs. Their scandal about Queen Elizabeth, and 
their wood-cuts of the devil whispering in the ear of John Fox, 
will produce nothing but disgust. They must conduct the con- 
troversy with good sense and good temper, and there cannot be 
the slightest doubt of the issue. But of this they may be fully 
assured, that, while the general feeling of the Nation remains 
unchanged, a Ministry which should stake its existence on the 



24 axottsti politics in 182?. 

success of their claims, would ruin itself, without benefiting 
them* 

The conduct of the Catholics, on the present occasion, deserves 
the highest praise. They have shown that experience has at last 
taught them to know their enemies from their friends. Indeed, 
there are few scenes in this tragicomic world of ours more amusing 
than that which the leaders of the Opposition are now performing. 
The very men who have so long obstructed Emancipation— who 
have stirred up the public feeling in England against Emancipation, 
— who, in fine, have just resigned their offices, because a supporter 
of Emancipation was placed at the head of the government, — are 
now weeping over the disappointed hopes of the poor Papists, and 
execrating the perfidious Whigs who have taken office without 
stipulating for their relief! The Catholics are, in the meantime, in 
the highest spirits, congratulating themselves on the success of 
their old friends, and laughing at the condoling visages of their 
new champions. 

Something not very dissimilar is taking place with respect to 
Parliamentary Reform. The reformers are delighted with the new 
Ministry. Their opponents are trying to convince them that they 
ought to be dissatisfied with it. The Whigs, we suppose, ought to 
have insisted that Reform should be made a Ministerial measure. 
We will not at present inquire whether they have, as a body, ever 
declared any decided opinion on the subject. A much shorter 
answer will suffice. Be Reform good or bad, it is at present 
evidently unattainable. No man can, by coming into office, or by 
going out of office, either effect it or prevent it. As we are alwiwnw 
with people who are more influenced by one name than by ten 
reasons, we will remind them of the conduct pursued by Mr. Pitt 
with regard to this question. At the very time when he publicly 
pledged himself to use his whole power, " as a man and as a 
minister, honestly and boldhf to carry a proposition of Parlia- 
mentary Reform, he was sitting in the same Cabinet with persona 



ENGLISH TOLITICS IN 1827. 25 

decidedly hostile to every measure of the kind. At the present 
juncture, we own that we should think it as absurd in any man tc 
decline office for the sake of this object, as it would have been ic 
Sir Thomas More to refuse the Great Seal, because he could not 
introduce all the institutions of Utopia into England. The world 
would be in a wretched state indeed, if no person were to accept of 
power, under a form of government which he thinks susceptible of 
improvement. The effect of such scrupulosity would be, that the 
best and wisest men would always be out of place ; that all author- 
ity would be committed to those who might be too stupid or too 
selfish to see abuses in any system by which they could profit, and 
who, by their follies and vices, would aggravate all the evils 
springing from defective institutions. 

But were we to admit the truth of every charge which personal 
enemies or professional slanderers have brought against the present 
ministers of the Crown, were we to admit that they had abandoned 
their principles, that they had betrayed the Catholics and the 
Reformers, it would still remain to be considered, whether we 
might not change for the worse. We trust in God that there is 
no danger. We think that this country never will, never can, be 
subjected to the rule of a party so weak, so violent, so osten- 
tatiously selfish, as that which is now in Opposition. Has the 
Cabinet been formed by a coalition? How, let us ask, has the 
Opposition been formed ? Is it not composed of men who have, all 
their lives, been thwarting and abusing each other, Jacobins, 
Whigs, Tories, friends of Catholic Emancipation, enemies of 
Catholic Emancipation, — men united only by their common love 
of high rents, by their common envy of superior abilities, by their 
common wish to depress the people and to dictate to the throne ? 
Did Lord Lansdowne at any time differ so widely from Mr 
Canning as Lord Redesdale from Lord Lauderdale— sometime 
needle-maker, and candidate for the shrievalty of London ? Are 
the Ministers charged with deserting their opinions ? at d can we 

trti L ? 



26 ENGLISH POLITICS IN 1827. 

find no instance of miraculous conversion on the left of the 
woolsack ? What was the influence which transformed the Friend 
of the People into an aristocrat, " resolved to stand or fall with hi? 
order ?" Whence was the sudden illumination, which at oncf 
disclosed to all the discarded Ministers the imperfections of thf 
Corn Bill \ Let us suppose that the Whigs had, as a party, 
brought forward some great measure before the late changes, that 
they had carried it through the Commons, that they had sent it 
up, with the fairest prospect of success, to the Lords, and that they 
had then, in order to gratify Mr. Canning, consented, in the face 
of all their previous declarations, to defeat it, what a tempest of 
execration and derision would have burst upon them ! Yet the 
conduct of the Ex-Ministers, according to the best lights we can 
obtain upon it, was even more culpable than this. Not content 
with doing a bad thing, they did it in the worst way. The bill 
which had been prepared by the leader for whom they professed 
boundless veneration, which had been brought in under their own 
sanction, which, as they positively declared, had received their 
fullest consideration, which one of themselves had undertaken to 
conduct through the House of Lords, that very bill they contrived 
to defeat : — and, in the act of defeating it, they attempted to lay 
upon the colleagues whom they had deserted, the burden of public 
resentment which they alone had incurred. We would speak with 
indulgence of men who had done their country noble service before 
— and of many of whom, individually, it must be impossible to 
think otherwise than with respect. But the scene lately passed 
in that great assembly has afflicted and disgusted the country at 
large ; and it is not the least of its evil consequences, that it has 
lessened in the public estimation, not only a body which ought 
always to be looked up to with respect, but many individuals ot 
whose motives we cannot bring ourselves to judge unfavourably, 
and from whose high qualities we trust the country may yet 
receive both benefit and honour. Mr. Peel fortunately did not 



feNGLISIl t>0LiTtC8 IN l&%$\ 21 

expose himself quite as effectually as his associates; though w* 
regret that the tone he adopted was so undecided and equivocal 
It was not for him to pronounce any judgment on the wisdom of 
their conduct. lie was fully convinced of the purity of their 
motives. And finally it was the eighteenth of June ! — a day on 
which, it seems, the Duke of Wellington is privileged to commit 
all sorts of mischief with impunity to the end of his life. The 
Duke of Wellington, however, though the part which he took was 
unfortunately prominent, seems to have heen comparatively inno- 
cent. He might not, while in office, have paid much attention to 
the measure in its original form. He might not have understood 
the real nature of his own unlucky amendment. But what were 
the motives of Earl Bathurst ? Or where were they when he under- 
took the care of the bill in its former shape ? Nothing had been 
changed since, excepting his own situation. And it would be the 
very madness of charity to believe, that, if he had still been a 
colleague of Lord Liverpool, or had been able to come to terms 
witli Mr. Canning, he would have pursued such a line of conduct. 
Culpably as all his coadjutors have acted in this transaction, his 
share of it is the most indefensible. 

And it is for these men, — for men who, before they have been 
two months out of office, have retracted the declarations which 
they made on a most important subject just before they quitted 
office, — that we are to discard the present ministers, as inconsistent 
and unprincipled ! And these men are the idols of those who 
entertain so virtuous a loathing for unnatural coalitions, and base 
compromises. These men think themselves entitled to boast of 
the purity of their public virtues, and to repel, with indignant 
amazement, any imputation of interested or factious motives. 

We dwell long on this event; because it is one which enables 
the country to estimate correctly the practical principles of thos« 
who, if the present ministers should fall, will assuredly take their 



*2§ SngUs^ ^otttfcs in 18^1 

places. To call their conduct merely factious, is to deal with it fat 
too mildly. It has been factious at the expense of consistency, and 
of all concern for the wishes and interests of the people. Was 
there no other mode of embarrassing the government ? Could no 
other opportunity be found or made for a division ? Was there no 
other pledge which could be violated, if not with less awkwardness 
to themselves, at least with less injury to the state? Was it 
necessary that they should make a handle of a question on which 
the passions of the people were roused to the highest point, and 
on which its daily bread might depend that they should condemn 
the country to another year of agitation, and expose it to dangers, 
which, only a few months before, they had themselves thought it 
necessary to avert, by advising an extraordinary exercise of the 
prerogative ? There is one explanation, and only one. They were 
out, and they longed to be in. Decency, consistency, the prospe- 
rity and peace of the country, were as dust in the balance. They 
knew this question had divided men who were generally united, 
and united others who were usually opposed ; and though they 
themselves had already taken their part with their colleagues in 
office and the more intelligent part of their habitual opponents, 
they did not scruple, for the sake of embarrassing those they had 
deserted, to purchase the appearance of a numerous following, by 
opposing a measure which they had themselves concocted, and 
pledged themselves to support. From the expedients to which 
they have resorted in Opposition, we may judge of what w r e have 
to expect if they should ever return to office. 

They will return too, it must be remembered, not, as before, the 
colleagues of men by whose superior talents they were overawed, 
and to whose beneficial measures they were often compelled tc 
yield a reluctant consent. The late change has separated the 
greater part of them from all such associates for ever : it ha c 
divided the light from the darkness : it has set all the wisdom, all 



ENGLISH POLITICS IN Iftftff. 2§ 

the liberality, all the public spirit on one side ; the imbecility, the 
bigotry, and the rashness on the other. If they rule again, they 
will rule alone. 

They will return to situations which they will owe neither to 
their talents nor to their virtues, neither to the choice of their Kmr 
nor to the love of their country; but solely to the support of an 
Oligarchical Faction, richly endowed with every quality which 
ensures to its possessors the hatred of a nation, — a faction arbitrary, 
bigoted, and insolent, — a faction which makes parade of its 
contempt for the dearest interests of mankind, which loves to 
make the people feel of how little weight, in its deliberations, is 
the consideration of their happiness. 

On this party, and on th^s alone, must such ministers, returning 
from such a secession, rely to uphold them against the public 
opinion, against the wishes of a King who has wisely and nobly 
performed his duty to the state, against the most beloved and 
respected portion of the aristocracy, against a formidable union of 
all the great statesmen and orators of the age. It was believed by 
those of whose wisdom Lord Eldon and the Duke of Newcastle 
think with reverence, that, in the bond between a sorcerer and his 
familiar demon, there was a stipulation that the gifts bestowed by 
the Powers of Evil should never be employed but for purposes of 
evil. Omnipotent for mischief, these obligors of the fiend were 
powerless for good. Such will be the compact between the Ex-Mi- 
nisters, if ever they should return to power, and the only party which 
can then support them. That they may be masters, they must be 
slaves. They will be able to stand only by abject submission and 
by boundless profusion —by giving up the People to be oppressed, 
first for the profit of the Great, and then for their amusement, — by 
corn-laws, and game-laws, and pensions for Lord Robert, and places 
for Lord John. 

They will return pledged to oppose every reform, to maintain a 
constant struggle against the spirit of the age, to defend abuses to 



30 English pOLiTtcs in 182?. 

which the nation is every day becoming more quick-si ghttd 
Even Mr. Peel, if, unluckily, he should at last identify himself 
with their faction, must restrain his propensity to innovation 
Mutterings have already been heard in high places against his 
tendencies to liberality ; and all his schemes for the reformation of 
our code or our courts must be abandoned. 

Then will come all those desperate and cruel expedients of which 
none but bad governments stand in need. The press is trou- 
blesome. There must be fresh laws against the press. Secret 
societies are formed. The Habeas Corpus act must be suspended. 
The people are distressed and tumultuous. They must be kept 
down by force. The army must be increased ; and the taxes must 
be increased. Then the distress and tumult are increased : and 
then the army must be increased again ! The country will be 
governed as a child is governed by an ill-tempered nurse. — first 
beaten till it cries, and then beaten because it cries ! 

Our firm conviction is, that if the seceders return to office, they 
will act thus ; and that they will not have the power, even if they 
should have the inclination, to act otherwise. And what must the 
end of these things be? We answer, without hesitation, that, if 
this course be persisted in, if these counsels and these counsellors 
are maintained, the end must be, a revolution, a bloody and 
unsparing revolution — a revolution which will make the ears of 
those who hear of it tingle in the remotest countries, and in the 
remotest times. The middling orders in England are, we well 
know, attached to the institutions of their country, but not with a 
blindly partial attachment. They see the merits of the system; 
but they also see its faults ; and they have a strong and growing 
desire that these faults should be removed. If, while their wish 
for improvement is becoming stronger and stronger, the govern- 
ment is to become worse and worse, the consequence* are obvious. 
Even now, it is impossible to disguise, that there is arising in the 
bosom of that class a Republican sect, as audacious, as paradoxical, 



ENGLISH POLITICS IN 1827. 3* 

as little inclined to respect antiquity, as enthusiastically attached t<i 
its ends, as unscrupulous in the choice of its means, as the French 
Jacobins themselves, — but far superior to the French Jacobins in 
acuteness and information — in caution, in patience, and in reso- 
lution. They are men whose minds have been put into training 
for violent exertion. All that is merely ornamental — all that gives 
the roundness, the smoothness, and the bloom, has been exsuded, 
Nothing is left but nerve, and muscle, and bone. Their love of 
liberty is no boyish fancy. It is not uourished by rhetoric, and it 
does not evaporate in rhetoric. They care nothing for Leonidas, 
and Epaminondas, and Brutus, and Codes. They profess to 
derive their opinions fiom demonstration alone ; and are never so 
little satisfied with them as when they see them exhibited in a 
romantic form. Metaphysical and political science engage their 
whole attention. Philosophical pride has done for them what 
spiritual pride did for the Puritans in a former age ; it has ge- 
nerated in them an aversion for the fine arts, for elegant literature, 
and for the sentiments of chivalry. It has made them arrogant, 
intolerant, and impatient of all superiority. These qualities will, 
in spite of their real claims to respect, render them unpopular, 
as long as the people are satisfied with their rulers. But under an 
ignorant and tyrannical ministry, obstinately opposed to the most 
moderate and judicious innovations, their principles would spread 
as rapidly as those of the Puritans formerly spread, in spite of 
their offensive peculiarities. The public, disgusted with the blind 
adherence of its rulers to ancient abuses, would be reconciled to 
the most startling novelties. A strong democratic party would be 
formed in the educated class. In the lowest, and most numerous 
order of the population, those who have any opinions at all are de- 
mocrats already. In our manufacturing towns, the feeling is even 
now formidably strong; and it is not strange that it should be so : 
For it is on persons in this station that the abuses of our system 
press most heavily; while its advantages, on the other hand^ 



32 ENGLISH TOLITICS IN 1827. 

are comparatively little felt by them. An abundant supply of the 
necessaries of. life is, with them, almost the only consideration. 
The difference between an arbitrary and a limited monarchy 
vanishes, when compared with the difference between one meal 
a-day and three meals a day. It is poor consolation to a man who 
has had no breakfast, and expects no supper, that the King does 
not possess a dispensing power, and that troops cannot be raised in 
time of peace, without the consent of Parliament. With this class, 
our government, free as it is, is even now as unpopular as if it 
were despotic, — nay, much more so. In despotic states, the multi- 
tude is unaccustomed to general speculations on politics. Even 
when men suffer most severely, they look no further than the 
proximate cause. They demand the abolition of a particular duty, 
or tear an obnoxious individual to pieces. But they never think 
of attacking the whole system. If Constantinople were in the 
state in which Manchester and Leeds have lately been, there 
would be a cry against the Grand Vizier or the bakers. The 
head of the Vizier would be thrown to the mob, over the wall of 
the Serao-lio — a score of bakers would be smothered in their own 
ovens; and everything would go on as before. Not a single 
rioter would think of curtailing the prerogatives of the Sultan, or 
of demanding a representative divan. But people familiar with 
political inquiries carry their scrutiny farther; and, justly or 
unjustly, attribute the grievances under which they labour, to 
defects in the original constitution of the government. Thus it is 
with a large proportion of our spinners, our grinders, and our 
weavers. It is not too much to say, that in a season of distress, 
they are ripe for any revolution. This, indeed, is acknowledged by 
all the Tory writers of our time. But all this, they tell us, comes 
of education — it is all the fault of the Liberals. We will not take 
up the time of our readers with answering such observations. We 
will only remind our gentry and clergy, that the question at 
present is not about the cause of the evil- but about its cure ; and 



ENGLISH POLITICS IN 1827. 33 

that, unless due precaution be used, let the fault be whose it may, 
the punishment will inevitably be their own. 

The history of our country, since the peace of 1815, is almost 
entirely made up of the struggles of the lower orders against the 
government, and of the efforts of the government to keep them 
down. In 1816, immense assemblies were convened, secret socie 
ties were formed, and gross outrages were committed. In 1817, 
the Habeas Corpus Act was twice suspended. In 1819, the 
disturbances broke out afresh. Meetings were held, so formidable, 
from their numbers and their spirit, that the Ministry, and the 
Parliament, approved of the conduct of magistrates who had 
dispersed one of them by the sword. Fresh laws were passed 
against seditious writings and practices. Yet the following year 
commenced with a desperate and extended conspiracy for the 
assassination of the cabinet, and the subversion of the government. 
A few months after this event, the Queen landed. On that 
occasion, the majority of the middling orders joined with the mob. 
The effect of the union was irresistible. The Ministers and the 
Parliament stood aghast; the bill of pains and penalties was 
dropped ; and a convulsion, which seemed inevitable, was averted. 
But the events of that year ought to impress one lesson on the 
mind of every public man, — that an alliance between the dis- 
affected multitude and a large portion of the middling orders, is 
one with which no government can venture to cope, without 
imminent danger to the constitution. 

A government like that with which England would be cursed, if 
the present Ministry should fall before the present Opposition, 
would render such an alliance not only inevitable, but permanent. 
In less than ten years, it would goad every Reformer in the 
country into a Revolutionist. It would place at the head of the 
multitude, persons possessing all the education, all the judgment, 
and all the habits of co-operation, in which the multitude itself is 
deficient. That great body u physically the most povWnl in ffo 



34 ENGLISH POLITICS IN 1827. 

state. Like the Hebrew champion, it is yet held in captivity by its 
blindness. But if once the eyeless Giant shall find a guide to put 
his band on the props of the State — if once he shall bow himseif 
upon the pillars, woe to all those who have made him their 
laughing-stock, or chained him to grind at their mill ! 

We do, therefore, firmly believe, that, even if no external cause 
were to precipitate a fatal crisis, this country could not be governed 
for a single generation by such men as Lord Westmoreland and 
Lord Eldon, without extreme risk of revolution. But there are 
other symptoms in the body politic, not less alarming than those 
which we have described. In Ireland, there are several millions 
of Catholics, who do not love our government ; and who detest, 
with all their heart, with all their soul, with all their mind, and 
with all their strength, the party now in Opposition. The accession 
of that party to power, would be a death-blow to their hopes of 
obtaining their demands by constitutional means : and we may 
fairly expect, that all the events which followed the recall of Lord 
Fitzwilliam, will take place again, on a greater and more formidable 
scale. One thing, indeed, we have no right to expect, that a second 
Hoche will be as unfortunate as the former. A civil war in Ireland 
will lead almost necessarily to a war with France. Maritime 
hostilities with France, and the clash of neutral and belligerent 
pretensions, will then produce war with America. Then c*ne 
expeditions to Canada and expeditions to Java. The Cape of 
urooci Mope must be garrisoned. Lisbon must be defended. Let 
us suppose the best. That best must be, a long conflict, a dear- 
bought victory, a great addition to a debt already most burthen- 
some, fresh taxes, and fresh discontents. All these are events 
which may not improbably happen under any government — events 
which the next month may bring forth — events, against which no 
minister, however able and honest, can with perfect certainty 
provide,— but which Ministers, whose policy should exasperate the 
people of Ireland, would aJmc" J IJ ~bly bring upon us, 4 



EftGltSH POLITICS tS 1821. §5 

Oabinet formed by tlie Ex-ministers could scarcely exist for n year, 
without incensing the lower classes of the English to frenzy, by 
giving them up to the selfish tyranny of its aristocratical sup- 
porters, without driving Ireland into rebellion, and without 
tempting France to war. 

There is one hope, and one hope only for our country; nnc 
that hope is in a liberal Administration, — in an A dminisl ration 
which will follow with cautious, but with constantly advancing steps, 
the progress of the public mind ; which, by promptitude to redress 
practical grievances, will enable itself to oppose with authority and 
effect, the propositions of turbulent theorists ; which by kindness 
and fairness in all its dealings with the People, will entitle itself to 
their confidence and esteem. 

The state of England at the present moment bears a close 
resemblance to that of France at the time when Turgot was called 
to the head of affairs. Abuses were numerous ; public burdens 
heavy ; a spirit of innovation was abroad among the people. The 
philosophical minister attempted to secure the ancient institutions, 
by amending them. The mild reforms which he projected, had 
they been carried into execution, would have conciliated the people, 
and saved from the most tremendous of all commotions the church, 
the aristocracy, and the throne. But a crowd of narrow-minded 
nobles, ignorant of their own interest, though solicitous for nothing 
else, the Newcastles and the Salisburys of France, began to tremble 
for their oppressive franchises. Their clamours overpowered the 
mild good sense of a king who wanted only firmness to be the 
best of sovereigns. The minister was discarded for councillors 
more obsequious to the privileged orders ; and the aristocracy and 
clergy exulted in their success. 

Then came a new period of profusion and misrule. And then, 
swiftly, like an armed man, came poverty and dismay. The accla- 
mations of the nobles, and the Te Deums of the church, grew 
fainter and fainter. The very courtiers muttered disapprobation 



8(j fctfGLtSH POttTtCS tX l&St. 

The ministers stammered out feeble and inconsistent counsels 
But all other voices were soon drowned in one, which every 
moment waxed louder and more terrible, — in the fierce and tumul- 
tuous roar of a great people, conscious of irresistible strength, 
maddened by intolerable wrongs, and sick of deferred hopes ! 
That cry, so long stifled, now rose from every corner of France, 
made itself heard in the presence-chamber of her king, in the 
saloons of her nobles, and in the refectories of her luxurious 
priesthood. Then, at length, concessions were made which the 
subjects of Louis the Fourteenth would have thought it impious 
even to desire, — which the most factious opponent of Louis the 
Fifteenth had never ventured to ask, — which, but a few years 
before, would have been received with ecstacies of gratitude. But 
it was too late ! 

The imprisoned genie of the Arabian Tales, during the early 
period of his confinement, promised wealth, empire, and super- 
natural powers, to the man who should extricate him. But when 
he had waited long in vain, mad with rage at the continuance of 
his captivity, he vowed to destroy his deliverer without mercy ! 
Such is the gratitude of nations, exasperated by misgovernment, 
to rulers who are slow to concede. The first use which they make 
of freedom is to avenge themselves on those who have been so 
slow to grant it. 

Never was this disposition more remarkably displayed than at 
the period of which we speak. Abuses were swept away with 
unsparing severity. The royal prerogatives, the feudal privileges, 
the provincial distinctions, were sacrificed to the passions of the 
people. Every thing was given ; and every thing was given in 
vain. Distrust and hatred were not to be thus eradicated from 
the minds of men who thought that they were not receiving 
favors but extorting rights; and that, if they deserved blame, it 
was not for their insensibility to tardy benefits, but for theil 
forgetfulness of past oppression 



■fiKOUStt Potmcs in 1827. 31 

What followed was the necessary consequence of such a stati* <>f 
feeling. The recollection of old grievances made the people sub 
picious and cruel. The fear of popular outrages produced emigra- 
tions, inlrigues with foreign courts, and, finally, a general war. 
Then came the barbarity of fear; the triple despotism of the 
clubs, the committees, and the commune; the organized anarchy, 
the fanatical atheism, the scheming and far-sighted madness, the 
butcheries of the Chatelet, and the accursed marriages of the 
Loire. The whole property of the nation changed hands. Its 
best and wisest citizens were banished or murdered. Dungeons 
were emptied by assassins as fast as they were filled by spies. 
Provinces were made desolate. Towns were unpeopled. Old 
things passed away. All things became new. 

The paroxysm terminated. A singular train of events restored 
the house of Bourbon to the French throne. The exiles have 
returned. But they have returned as the few survivors of the 
deluge returned to a world in which they could recognise nothing; 
in which the valleys had been raised, and the mountains depressed, 
and the courses of the rivers changed, — in which sand and sea- 
weed had covered the cultivated fields and the walls of imperial 
cities. They have returned to seek in vain, amidst the mouldering 
relics of a former system, and the fermenting elements of a new 
creation, the traces of any remembered object. The old boun- 
daries are obliterated. The old laws are forgotten. The old titles 
have become laughing- stocks. The gravity of the parliaments, 
and the pomp of the hierarchy; the doctors whose disputes 
agitated the Sorbonne, and the embroidered multitude whose 
footsteps wore out the marble pavements of Versailles, — all have 
disappeared. The proud and voluptuous prelates who feasted on 
silver, and dozed amidst curtains of massy velvet, have been 
replaced by curates who undergo every drudgery and every humi- 
liation for the wages of lackeys. To those gay and elegant nobles 
who studied military science as a fashionable accomplishment, and 



38 fi»GMs& frotmce is i§2l 

expected military rank as a part of their birthright, have succeeded 
men born in lofts and cellars ; educated in the half-naked ranks 
of the revolutionary armies, and raised by ferocious valour and self- 
taught skill, to dignities with which the coarseness of their manners 
and language forms a grotesque contrast. The government may 
amuse itself by playing at despotism, by reviving the names and 
aping the style of the old court— as Helenus in Epirus consoled 
himself for the lost magnificence of Troy, by calling his brook 
Xanthus, and the entrance of his little capital the Scaean gate. 
But the law of entail is gone, and cannot be restored. The liberty 
of the press is established, and the feeble struggles of the minister 
cannot permanently put it down. The Bastile is fallen, and can 
never more rise from its ruins. A few words, a few ceremonies, a 
few rhetorical topics, make up all that remains of that system 
which was founded so deeply by the policy of the house of Valois, 
and adorned so splendidly by the pride of Louis the Great 

Is this a romance ? Or is it a faithful picture of whftt has lately 
been in a neighboring land — of what may shortly be within the 
borders of our own ? Has the warning been given in vain ? Have 
our Mannerses and Clintons so soon forgotten the fate of houses as 
wealthy and as noble as their own ? Have they forgotten how 
the tender and delicate woman, — the woman who would not set 
her foot on the earth for tenderness and delicateness, the idol of 
gilded drawing-rooms, the pole-star of crowded theatres, the 
standard of beauty, the arbitress of fashion, the patroness of 
genius — was compelled to exchange her luxurious and dignified 
ease for labour and dependence ; the sighs of dukes and the flattery 
of bowing abbes for the insults of rude pupils and exacting 
mothers ; — perhaps, even to draw an infamous and miserable sub- 
sistence from those charms which had been the glory of royal 
circles — to sell for a morsel of bread her reluctant caresses and her 
haggard smiles — to be turned over from a garret to a hospital, and 
from a hospital to a parish vault ? Have they forgotten how th« 



ENGLISH POLITICS IN 1827. 3P 

gallant and luxurious nobleman, sprung from illustrious ancestors, 
marked out from his cradle for the highest honours of the state and 
of the army, impatient of control, exquisitely sensible of the 
slightest affront, with all his high spirit, his polished manners, his 
voluptuous habits, was reduced to request, with tears in his eyes, 
credit for half-a-crown, — to pass day after day in hearing the 
auxiliary verbs misrecited, or the first page of Telemaque miscon- 
strued, by petulant boys, who infested him with nicknames and 
caricatures, who mimicked his foreign accent, and laughed at his 
thread-bare coat. Have they forgotten all this? God grant that 
they may never remember it with unavailing self-accusation, when 
de.-olation shall have visited wealthier cities and fairer gardens; — 
when Manchester shall be as Lyons, and Stowe as Chantilly ; — 
when he who now, in the pride of rank and opulence, sneers at 
what we have written in the bitter sincerity of our hearts, shall be 
thankful for a porringer of broth at the door of some Spanish 
convent, or shall implore some Italian money-lender to advance 
ar other pistole on his George ! 



40 



STATE OF PARTIES.* 

[A Sequel to the Preceding Article.] 

Spirit of Party. 8vo. London, 1827. 

We design to make here a few observations, by way of supple 
ment to the Article in our last Number, which has been in several 
particularsf, we are sorry to find, exceedingly misunderstood in 
some respectable quarters,, as it has certainly, we are not surprised 
to remark, been grossly misrepresented in others of a widely differ- 
ent description. 

The State of Parties, and the condition of public affairs gene- 
rally, is, in some respects, materially different from anything ever 
known in this country. For some years, indeed ever since the 
termination of the wars arising out of the French Revolution, the 
opinions favoured by sound reason, and avouched by the practical 
test of experience, upon all subjects of foreign and domestic policy, 
had been making a steady and sure, because a quiet and peaceful 
progress among the more intelligent parts of the community. As 
intelligence spread wider by the diffusion of knowledge, the dis- 
semination of those opinions became more enlarged, and their 
operation upon all classes of society more efficacious. They had 
been making considerable advances both in France and England, 
during the period between the American and the French Revolu- 
tions. But the latter event had cruelly disappointed in its progress 

* Edinburgh Review, October, 1827. 

f Among other mistakes, we find it ascribed to various persons, eminent 
statesmen and others, who, if they have ever seen it, which we know not 
Ifgurecllv never could have seen it before it was published? 



STATE OF fAftft&St. 41 

)lie hopes raised by its first fair prospects ; and the horrors of the 
times of Anarchy, followed by the military tyranny of Napoleon, 
and the dreadful wars in which he involved his country and Europe, 
otherwise so deeply his debtors, had stampt all change with the most 
hateful characters, and accustomed men to confound reform with 
rebellion, reckoning the friend of freedom and improvement, one 
who would sacrifice order and peace, and all established institu- 
tions, to wild extravagant speculation — a victim as it were to the 
love of change for its own sake. The fall of Napoleon, and the 
peace that followed the French Restoration, finally put down those 
groundless prejudices against the safest course of policy, and made 
an end of the calumnies so long heaped upon the best friends of 
order and existing establishments — those who, by tranquil amend- 
ments, would destroy all the purchase that revolutionists ever can 
have whereby to work their overthrow. Accordingly, the natural 
course of education and knowledge has silently been producing its 
fruits ; sound and enlightened views of policy have been gaining 
ground ; truth, no longer counteracted in its progress, has been 
making WiiyiijeMefyiwhiere ; and wisdom, no longer overawed by 
noisy .e^inoUr ox childish fears, has been teaching her lessons to a 
willing gpBtiJfttictfUiu 

For some years of the period on which we are looking back, 
the Government of this country was iptrusted to the management 
of men, who gave it a direction widely different from the course 
of public opinion, and conducted it upon all the principles of the 
most narrow and vicious policy, as if they alone, and the engine 
in their hands, stood still amidst the general advance of the age. 
While the Finances, and indeed all the internal affairs of the 
State, were under the guidance of persons, whose notions were the 
refuse of tne antiquated school ; the Foreign Minister, though not 
by nature deficient in liberal feelings, and certainly gifted with no 
common talents, and, above all, with great sagacity, had, unhappily 
for his country and for his reputation, become intimately connected 



42 STA1E OF PARTIES. 

with the Continental Sovereigns and their chief Statesmen, anfl 
had imbibed from this intercourse a prejudice against free opinions, 
and a dislike of Constitutional Government, so strong as almost tc 
renew in our political system, the exploded terrors about Jacobin- 
ism and French principles. All improvements in the Constitution 
of the Continental States were to be discountenanced as revolu- 
tionary : everything that could lead to a change, how slowly and 
peaceably soever, was to be resisted : the strong arm of absolute 
power was to be deemed the only security for the public peace ; 
and the iron hand of military force, the only means by which that 
arm could work its destined end. These principles soon embodied 
themselves in the famous League so universally dreaded at first, 
then detested, and since despised, under the name of the Holy 
Alliance. Professing only to have the intention of keeping the 
peace, those combined Princes, extending their union over almost 
all Europe, guaranteed to each other, not only the integrity of their 
dominions, but the unchanged existence of all their internal insti- 
tutions ; and some of them having succeeded in reconquering their 
dominions from Napoleon, by the aid of their people* 'to whom 
they had promised a Representative Governihetok, fts the 'appropri- 
ate reward of a constancy worthy of freeme*, 'Eut'&pe, with 
astonishment, saw thoi=e yery Monarchs become parties to this 
combination against aJjjl • Ifevement, as if for the very purpose 
of preventing themselv^lj-om .redeeming pledges so sacred, and 
which had passed for so mighty a consideration. The wonder, 
however, stopt not here: The leagued Sovereigns made war at their 
pleasure to prevent the peace from being disturbed. Wherever a 
Prince was compelled or induced to adopt free institutions, the 
Allies marched an army to restore his absolute authority and his 
people's subjection ; and the formal accession of England was 
alone wanting to make the sway of this grand nuisance universal ; 
nay, to extend its claims, which were once actually preferred, ovei 
our own country. In all these unheard of proceedings, infinitely 



STATE OF PARTIES. 43 

more dangerous to National Independence than the wildest fury 
of the French Republic, or the mightiest projects of Napcleon 
himself, it was a miserable sight to behold England, once the 
patroness of public freedom, — the enemy of aggression, — the 
refuge of all oppressed nations, stoop to become the willing wit- 
ness, and even the unresisting tool of the most flagitious conspiracy 
the world ever saw, excepting, perhaps, the high crime last perpe- 
trated by the same despotic Princes, the partition of Poland. Yet 
so it was ; and such was the price we paid for our Minister having 
acted as our Ambassador, and kept the high company of absolute 
Monarchs, and their unconstitutional and irresponsible counsellors. 
The tone, too, of these foreign Courts was imported into our Par- 
liament and our Cabinet ; it became customary to deride everything 
free and liberal as new-fangled, and low, and dangerous to good 
government; men extolled all the little drivelling notions of 
Austrian Hof-raths and Kriegs-raths, as sound, old, well- wearing 
maxims, and laughed at the doctrines of the New-School, as wholly 
unknown to the warriors of Leipsic and Waterloo, or the negotia- 
tors of Vienna and of Aix. It is true, that our official statesmen 
had all this pleasantry to themselves ; they made no converts in 
the country ; they found neither sympathy nor support from the 
people ; and as often as they attempted in Parliament to countenance 
their favourite topic, the soiry reception they met with, seemed 
adjusted in a nice proportion to its intrinsic merit, and the talents 
by which it was recommended. 

Meanwhile, upon questions of internal policy, the liberal feelings 
of the country generally prevailed, even in Parliamentary divisions, 
over the narrow views of the Court. One after another, the Go- 
vernment abandoned many of the most pernicious taxes and lines 
of mercantile policy, and at length, after long resistance, it adopted 
sound principles upon the~ important subject of reform in the 
system and administration of the laws. While its opponents were 
preparing new measures^ and expecting additional triumph* M 



44 STATE OF PARTIES. 

home ; while its allies abroad were about to carry theii aggressions 
on all national independence farther than ever, by the most iniqui- 
tous of all their measures for extirpating liberty; the melancholy 
event of the minister's decease, who had erred, we believe, much 
more from want of foresight and deliberate reflection in the early 
stage of the intercourse, than from any evil designs towards liberty 
at any period, gave a new and happier aspect to the face of affairs 
in this country, as far as the Government was concerned, and 
eventually produced a very sensible change for the better in the 
policy of other powers, and in the prospects of a large portion of 
the world. He was succeeded by a statesman of far more enlarged 
views, and more brilliant talents, his inferior certainly in some of 
the qualities calculated to gain a following in Parliament, but 
worthy of all acceptation in comparison of him, because uncon- 
nected with the enemies of freedom, and committed to none of 
the worst principles at least of later times, by which improvement 
had been stifled abroad and obstructed at home. Catastrophes 
very different indeed, but almost equally sudden, have now deprived 
the country of both those statesmen ; and we may be enabled 
calmly to reflect upon their conduct and their merits, without 
heaping on the one unmerited obloquy, though, unfortunately for 
his fame, he died when events had brought the policy he was con- 
nected with to its lowest pitch in public consideration, — without 
raising altars to the other's memory, because we lost him when the 
system he maintained looked the fairest in all men's eyes, and 
dazzled them into a forgetfulness of all that had happened 
before, 

The progress of liberal opinions was immediately and rapidly 
accelerated by the conduct, and still more by the language., of the 
Government in 1823 and the subsequent years. In a few months 
the disgraceful connexion with the Ilojy Alliance was at an end. 
and the' further proceedings of that combination wer.e so far 
gjigeked, that it nn bai li^ n.ow he said to. I^ys wv vr TMstenc^ 



bTATE OF I'AHTIES. 45 

The recognition of the new commonwealths in South America, 
and the establishment of political as well as mercantile relations 
with them, very soon followed ; the odious provisions of the Alien 
Bill were suffered to expire, and a restriction of little or no moment 
substituted in their place ; and the most decisive steps were taken 
to defend Portugal, harassed by the intrigues, and menaced by the. 
arms of Spain, for the crime of having accepted a Constitutional 
Government. At home, the policy so long recommended by the 
Liberal Parti/ both in and out of doors, was as steadily and effec- 
tually pursued, as that which they had maintained to be the sound, 
and British, and statesman-like view of Foreign Affairs. Oppres- 
sive and impolitic taxes were repealed, among others the duties on 
law proceedings ; the principles of Free Trade were adopted in 
many important cases, and the way was paved for extending them 
to all the parts of our mercantile system ; some of the reforms in 
the Criminal Law, which Sir Samuel Romilly had so long in vain 
laboured to recommend, and which had been resisted with too muck 
success till 1819, when Sir James Mackintosh, his follower in the 
same honourable career, carried a Committee for examining the state 
of that Code, were } on the principles of those enlightened indivi- 
duals, taken up by their former antagonists, and received the sanc- 
tion of the Legislature ; nay, so harmless was the name of judicial 
reform become, and so popular its pursuit with both court and 
country, that the same persons stopt not there, but introduced 
improvements, though more limited in principle, into other branches 
of jurisprudence. 

The effects produced by this fortunate and unexpected change 
in the conduct of the Ministry, upon the state and distribution of 
parties, both in Parliament and in the Country, were such as 
might have been expected, unless men had lost all regard for prin- 
ciple and consistency in their personal animosities, or in the worst 
abuse of party feelings. The Opposition lent their warm support 
to. Goy era went, as often as they saw a disposition to pursue the 



46 STATE OF PARTIES. 

sound and enlightened policy always recommended by them. Fa\ 
from the despicable, unprincipled inclination to discover faults in 
the manner of executing designs often suggested by themselves, 
and thus apparently save their consistency as to measures, while 
they continued their opposition to the men, they were even above 
the feeling of jealousy which would have kept inferior minds from 
coming forward to grace the triumphs of a rival ; they scarcely 
ever, certainly never but where the necessity of explaining their 
conduct to the public required it, reminded either the Government 
or the country, how long they had supported the policy, now 
luckily adopted in the quarter most likely to give it effect. All 
the while, (and we speak of some years, certainly of the Sessions 
1824, 1825, and 1826, but in not a few particulars of 1823 too,) 
there was nothing that indicated the least understanding between 
the parties who had been so long opposed to each other ; no appear- 
ance of any intercourse in private among their chiefs ; and wo 
believe it is universally understood that no arrangement, nor any 
treaty for an arrangement, had been so much as talked of in any 
political circle of the least importance. Indeed one symptom must 
remove all suspicion on this head ; whensoever the measures of 
the Ministry were objectionable, their adversaries were at their 
post, as ready as ever for the strife ; few more vehement debates, 
or with more party animation, have ever been carried on, than the 
discussions on the Catholic Association in 1825 ; and even trivial 
matters, from time to time, furnished fuel to maintain the heats 
which contending parties engender, though oftentimes separated 
by a narrow space. 

Nevertheless, with the symptoms which we have just noted, 
near observers did not fail to mark others, that seemed to gfaq 
prognostics of greater change, and more permanent co-operation. 
The Ministry were known to be much divided among themselves. 
One class supported the claims of the Catholics, as essentially just 
in theitfseJves, and maintained the expediency of cpmnlving with 



STATE OF t'AWttES. 4? 

them, as necessary for the safety of the em j>ire. Another refused 
upoii any account even to consider this great question ; they had 
tak<m their ground upon it, and from that ground they announced 
that no lapse of time, no change of circumstances, could move 
them. There seemed here a sufficient source of disunion to makf 
a disruption of the Ministry not merely a natural, but an unavoida- 
ble eyeia, But this was very far from being the only ground. 
The same parties were divided upon all the great principles of 
foreign and domestic policy, which having been discountenanced 
by the late Foreign Minister, both in the Cabinet, in his negotia- 
tions, and in Parliament, were now become the favourite maxims 
of his successor; but on these principles, the individuals who 
differed with him, were not so inflexible as upon the question, 
whether Ireland should be saved to the empire ; and opposing him 
on this, on those they only thwarted him, leaving the liberal course, 
in all or almost all cases but the most important, to be pursued 
by the State. That their assent was most reluctant; that it 
often was extorted by the apprehension of breaking up the Minis- 
try ; that matters were frequently kept quiet by the common unwil- 
lingness of all parties to press them to extremities — not seldom by 
the controlling influence either of the first person in the Ministry, 
or the first person in the State — cannot any longer be doubted 
But in the course of "these altercations two parties had been formed, 
and differing in all questions, constant dissent had produced fre- 
quent dissensions; and, as always happens in such cases, those 
dissensions were not confined to things, but extended to persons, 
until as much of animosity, probably, and as little mutual good- 
will, prevailed between the two parties that divided the Cabinet, 
as are found to subsist in ordinary times between the parties that 
divide the senate or the nation. 

Another symptom not unconnected with this, was now more 
and more perceptible. The Opposition became less vehement, less 
unremitting, in proportion as the breach was supposed to wider tr, 



4S STATE OF i'AKTiK^ 

the M.nistry ; and their support in great part, their colirteslel 
eutirely, were now given with a kind of reserve or discrimina- 
tion : it was to the ' Liberal part of the Government' that they 
lent their aid ; it was to them they looked for the reform of 
abuses ; it was in their sound principles that they reposed con- 
fidence for the future. To o-ive them encouragement in their wise 
and honourable course, became an object of importance for the 
good of the country ; and aware how their opponents in the Cabi- 
net endeavoured to hinder their progress, the Opposition employed 
ill means for comforting and strengthening their hands, and 
enabling them to overcome the common enemy. 

The year 1826 began with the measures rendered necessary 
by the commercial distress ; and the Liberal Parties on both 
sides of the House agreed fully in the support of them. A Ses- 
sion followed, remarkable for nothing so much as its want of 
interest ; and there had not been within the memory of man, 
so few points of difference between the contending parties in 
both Houses of Parliament. The General Election followed, and 
a marked distinction was everywhere to be traced in the con- 
duct of the Opposition towards the Liberal, and towards the 
Illiberal ' portion of his Majesty's Government.' The new Par- 
liament met, and the conduct pursued in Portugal, the grounds 
upon which it was defended, and the language so worthy of 
constitutional Ministers, in which that defence was couched, drew 
forth the most cordial and unqualified approbation from the Oppo- 
sition Leaders. The period of the Christmas recess arrived, and it 
is perfectly certain that up to that time no arrangement whatever 
had been made, or even propounded, or discoursed of between 
the two great portions of the Liberal Party, those in office, and 
those in opposition. 

Immediately after the recess, the noble Lord at the head of 
the Government was stricken with a grievous malady, which 
compelled him in a few weeks to resign his situation. In whai 



SfATfi OF l'AUTlfcS. 4§ 

wfcy his place should be supplied, was a question calculated tc 
trouble his colleagues at all times ; for he had great weight with 
them ; and though, on Irish questions, he adopted the illiberal 
views of one party to the uttermost extent of impolicy and into- 
lerance, on other matters he leant towards their adversaries, or 
at any rate, by his personal consideration with all, and his 
ancient intimacy with the leader of that side, he was enabled to 
preserve the Government from the violent end it so often seemed 
near coming to. But if the difficulty would at any time have 
been great, of finding a successor to that noble person, it was 
incalculably augmented by the present aspect of affairs abroad, 
and by the new balance of parties. What had been passing for 
some time in Parliament, above all, what had passed just before 
the recess, showed how infallibly the great body of the Opposition, 
both in and out of Parliament, that is, the only powerful party 
in both Houses, and an immense majority of all ranks in the 
country, would give their cordial support to the liberal part of 
the Cabinet ; and it might be safely predicted, that if Mr. Can- 
ning were placed at the head of the Government, no remains 
either of party or of personal animosity would interfere with 
their desire to give him and his friends, because of the policy 
they had so vwisely adopted and so ably patronised, a cordial 
and, if wanted, a systematic support. It was equally clear, that 
should they be driven out of the Ministry, a cordial and system- 
atic co-operation would be easily established between them and 
those who had indeed for years been their allies. So that while, 
on the one hand, the Liberal part of the Cabinet could stand 
more triumphantly than before, should the Illiberal resign, these 
had not the most trilling chance of maintaining their ground, 
should they, by taking the upper hand, drive their adversaries 
from office. 

If it be clear that such was the posture of affairs, the question 
was manifestly decided ; and it only remained for the opponents 
vol. t. 3 



50 StATK Of rAtt'l'lfiS. 

of Mr. Canning in the Cabinet, either to submit, or to retlfQ 
should he be placed by their common Master at the head of th* 
Government. He was plainly in a situation to dictate his own 
terms, while they had no power over him, either of continuing 
to govern without his assistance, or of opposing the Ministry he 
might form. Of the two courses, submission and resignation- 
they chose the latter, partly upon personal grounds of objection 
to the individual, partly upon public principles which they held 
widely differing from his, and which would have been betrayed, 
by serving under one who openly attached himself to the con- 
trary system. Accordingly, after a short interval spent in fruit- 
less negotiation, and in unavailing attempts to form a purely 
Tory Ministry — attempts wholly uncountenanced, it is believed, 
by the Sovereign, and which the most sagacious of themselves 
knew from the first to be desperate — they resigned in a body, 
leaving his Majesty without advisers, and the country without a 
Government. 

Far be from us, however, any design of imputing blame to 
the distinguished persons who suddenly, and, it is said, without 
any actual concert, took this step. Their feelings of personal 
honour may have justified it; their differences of opinion upon 
fundamental points may have required it. We are quite aware 
of the change in the aspect of the Catholic Question, which the 
substituting its zealous advocate for its determined opponent, 
as Prime Minister, was calculated to create. Indeed, we can 
much more easily comprehend the enemies of that great mea- 
sure feeling the impossibility of acting under Mr. Canning as 
their leader, both, in the Government and the House of Com- 
mons, than we can understand their so long allowing him the 
preponderance he had in the Cabinet, with the ostensible posi- 
tion he occupied in Parliament, before Lord Liverpool's politica 
demise. But there was one resignation not so easily under 
stood upon any of those grounds, and which remnins unexplained 



BTATE OF T ARTIES. 51 

either by personal or political disunion ; we mean Lord Melville's 
— whose conduct in his important office had given satisfaction ; 
whose opinions had uniformly been upon the liberal side in all 
questions, Irish as well as English ; and who was not understood 
to be separated, by any dislike, from those whose principles were 
his own. His retirement, therefore, while it was regretted, could 
only be accounted for upon the supposition of some punctilious 
notions of duty towards his other colleagues, or towards the Minis 
try, in the abstract, with which he had so long been connected ; 
— notions certainly in nowise calculated to lessen any one's respect 
for him, though all might desire to see them give way after a sea- 
son. Mr. Peel's retirement was also matter of some regret, 
because he had of late shown a disposition, worthy of all encou- 
ragement in official characters, to probe abuses both in the practice 
and structure of our judicial system,* and had adopted some of 

* The Newspapers have been filled with some very singular effusions 
during the late progress of the Western Circuit, purporting to be charges 
to various Grand Juries and Petit Juries, and addresses to prisoners, both 
before and after conviction, and interlocutory observations during the 
course of trials. To these, the name of the Chief Ji.stice of the Common 
Pleas is appended ; and the reader is frequently tempted to believe that 
they must be etforts of pleasantry, as where the learned Judge tells a con- 
viet, that 'we (of course meaning the prisoner as well as the Judge) are 
much indebted to the salutary change of the law, whereby the punish- 
ment is now raised from seven to fourteen years' transportation.' How- 
ever, be those productions genuine or not, we (and in this plural the 
learned Judge is certainly included) are not indebted to them in any respect 
whatever. They are distinguished by a great flow of language, eminently 
spirited.^ impressive, and often felicitous; by any one judicial quali y they 
assuredly are not marked. A great magistrate, the second in England, 
travelling the second of its circuits, to read lectures upon v hat ought to be 
the law, which he is only sworn to administer as it is; an making every 
charge the vehicle of unmeasured praises heaped upon one of the leaders 
of a well-k.iown political party, is not a spectacle which the friends either 
of tb# bejich or of the U>w c^n take great delight JO beholding. Th.§ 



52 STATE OF I'AKTIEft. 

the principles, nay, fostered the very measures of amendment M 
long recommended, with boundless learning, and unwearied zeal 
by the chiefs of the Liberal Party. But though Mr. Peel's conduct 
in leaving office might be regretted, it could not by any candid 
in in be blamed ; neither could the grounds of it be misunder- 
stood ; his resignation was widely different from Lord Melville's; 
he could not- with any regard to his character, or with any kind 
of consistency, have remained in office, at least in the Home 
Department, under one so pledged to the Catholics as Mr. Canning. 
Until this question should be settled, his retirement from power 
seemed almost unavoidable, the impossibility of his friends forming 
a Government being admitted on all hands ; and his wish to do so 
being to our apprehension more than problematical, as we are con- 
fident his interest in its being done is anything but doubtful ; for 
upon almost all other questions he has espoused the more liberal 
policy of those whom he left in office. 

We have now given the plain story of the late change, as it 
appears from facts known to all the world ; and we have had no 
occasion to invoke the aid of secret history for the untying of 
any knotty passages. Although it has never been pretended 
among all the silly and the wilful mis-statements which have been 
put forth, that any private understanding subsisted between tli6 
Liberal Ministers and the leaders of the Opposition previous to 

absurd exaggeration of all those eulogies, we are convinced, must be far 
more painful to the distinguished individual who is their subject than to 
any other person; if he is bepraised in respect of what he has done, he is 
also iauded for attempts not quite successful; and he is openly extolled for 
what others did* and not a little for what has never been done by any one 
With reference to his own share of the gain derived from this circuit, he 
may be tempted to say^' Pesmnum inimicorum genua laudatores — but of 
his panegyrist he may truly say — ' Satin eloquentim, sapien'ice parum; and 
may thus explain how he has himself contributed tp make yf a great Advo- 
0$e f a very moolerate Judge 



STATE OF PARTIES. 53 

the Easier recess, the most groundless and even ridiculous charges 
were advanced of perfidy and intrigue during those holidays, 
sometimes against the Ministers, sometimes against the Opposition. 
That not an instant was lost in opening a communication with the 
chiefs of that party, when the former Administration had been 
broken up, is veiy certain; and that such a step was as consistent 
with the purest honour and fair dealing in the one party, as it was 
with entire consistency in the other, and perfectly natural in both, 
no one who lias honoured the preceding narrative with his attention 
can for a moment doubt. Great reluctance was, however, shown 
in the Opposition to take office. Some of the new Ministry were 
known to oppose the Catholic claims ; some of the leading Whigs 
felt it impossible to join. them officially ; and this begot an unwil- 
lingness in those who felt no such difficulties, to become members 
of a Cabinet divided on so great a question, and likely to be 
opposed by so highly respected friends. 

Happily for the country, happily for their own reputation as 
statesmen of firm, consistent, and manly character, those scruples 
were overcome. A Cabinet was formed, in which the liberal part 
of the former Ministry -were cordially united with the loading men 
of the Opposition, and with two or three individuals not attached 
to the same views of policy, but whose very worst errors, as we 
must be allowed to call them, afforded, with their high stations, a 
securitv to the country against any rash and headlono- attempts 
being made to bring about changes, which, if gradually effected, 
may yet remedy all the evils of our domestic situation. 

The Session opened with much of complaint, and somewhat of 
menace. We love not to dwell on painful recollections. AVe are 
willing to hope that calmer reflection may render the retrospect 
for ever as unnecessary as it is unpleasing. In a very short time, 
the attacks upon the new Ministry were left in the hands of those, 
of whom, wishing -to speak with all possible respect, we may b« 
permitted to PftJT| that their weight m f<b$ country, m<l the plac* 



54 BTATE OF PARTIES. 

they occupy in the annals of its Council, are proportioned to theil 
intrinsic merits ; and that their adversaries must always feel con- 
tentment, if they should feel little pride, in being opposed tc 
their hostility. 

The close of the Session was speedily followed by the death of 
the Prime Minister, — too early for his country, though not for 
his own fame; and the Sovereign, in strict accordance with the 
universal desire of the people, directed the Government to be 
reconstructed upon the same principle as before. One change, 
though not in the Cabinet, attended this event ; the command 
of the army was again given to its most distinguished ornament, 
who never, in our opinion, should have for a day stooped from 
the loftier height he had scaled by his wisdom, his valour, and his 
brilliant fortune, to join in the little details and low intrigues of 
vulgar politics. We have said nothing of some of the Ministers 
who resigned ; but we suspect that no very deep affliction was 
suffei ^d by the country from their loss. After the very long period 
during which they had lived in office, their departure could hardly 
be deemed untimely ; and though one of those veterans retired 
with a great name, and all of them in the full possession of their 
faculties, there seemed a prevailing disposition, in the public mind, 
to express no sorrow for the loss, until they saw whether they 
could* be worse governed by their successors. They sunk gra- 
dually into a kind of watching Opposition — a corps of observa- 
ti )» ; and one thing must be admitted on all hands, whatever opi- 
nion may be entertained of the new Opposition from the recollec- 
tion of their past services, that no man looked forward to much 
occasion for them in their new capacity, since the new Ministry 
stands unrivalled by any former Government in popularity with 
the country, and surpassed by none in favour with the Crow 1. 

* In this country, we are often puzzled with will, and shall, uiould^ should, 
$nd could, &q we don't venture to suggest any- alteration 



STATfc Of fAkllES. fit 

It must be evident to every person of ordinary understanding, 
and be admitted by any one of moderate candour, that, in the 
effectual assistance which some of the Opposition render to the 
new Government, by taking part in it officially, and the disin- 
terested, though necessarily less efficient, support which others 
give it out of place, nothing is done by either class inconsistent 
with the strictest notions of party principle, or which, tried by 
the most rigorous standard of party duty, could be found wanting. 
Suppose the whole principles and distribution of political parties to 
have remaned unaltered of late years, we affirm, nor indeed has 
it ever been in terms denied, that the late Coalition was framed 
on the most approved models known in the best times of cm 
history. 

The only justification of party unions has always been found in 
their necessity, sometimes for curbing the influence of the execu- 
tive power, sometimes for promoting certain other principles held 
by the members of such associations in common, and deemed by 
them essential to the good of the country. Men have, through 
ambition, or avarice, or the other forms of selfishness, abused this 
privilege, or rather duty of public men ; they have leagued them- 
selves too-ether to extort better terms from their Sovereign, their 
opponents, or the public ; they have in reality been holding out 
and keeping together for some personal reasons, and not because 
they differed from their adversaries, and agreed among themselves 
in holding certain opinions — but they were never yet shameless 
enough to avow such motives: their profligacy has always paid 
the homage to political virtue, of pretending to act together 
because they concurred in maintaining principles different from 
those of other parties. Even where the ground of contention 
seemed the most narrow, and reduced as it were to a mere personal 
point, they sedulously magnified this by all the powers of refining 
and sophistry, if they could put forward a larger justification, and 
conceal the reason. Thus, when the great body of the Vhigs, in 



$6 StA,TE. OF PARfltfS* 

an evii hour for their public reputation and their influence in thi 
country, joined Lord North against Lord Shelburne, and opposed 
the peace which they had so long been urging, they were far from 
admitting that the mere assumption of the Treasury by one of 
their number instigated them to this ill-omened step, much less 
that they had sacrificed their principles on the American Question 
to gratify their spleen against a former colleague, and obtain tli€ 
highest station of power. They alleged that the new Minister 
had changed his principles upon the recognition of American 
independence ; that he was resolved to screen Indian delinquency ; 
that he owed his elevation to unconstitutional designs entertained 
by the Court against all the great parties of the country, for the 
purpose of governing more absolutely through creatures of its 
own. It was their adversaries who charged them with personal 
motives, and urged as an accusation against them, that the appoint- 
ment of the Frime Minister was the real cause of their secession. 
Does it not follow from such principles, rather is it not a proposi- 
tion of the very same purport, that when a body of men originally 
collected and banded against others by a political faith, in holding 
which it differed from them, finds all differences at an end, and 
former adversaries acting upon its own much cherished principles, 
a new line of conduct ought straightway to be pursued ? Com- 
mon honesty to the country, as well as a regard for consistency, 
requires that there should be an end of the Opposition, when 
there is an end of the only diversity that called for it, or indeed 
con Id justify it. Whoever would still keep aloof in such circum- 
stances, and continue in Opposition when there is no longer any 
public ground of difference, plainly admits his real motives all 
along to have been personal and selfish, however cunningly he 
may have varnished them over with the pretence of principle. To 
this charge it is manifest the Whigs would have exposed them- 
selves, had they held back from Mr. Canning's party, whom they 
had no tangible ground of differing with. 



8TATE OF PARTIES. 67 

But v/'e mat puc the case still more strongly upon mere party 
grounds. Coalitions have ever been held allowable, and some- 
times admitted to be the duty of statesmen, when necessary to 
further some great object of public good. To frame a strong 
Government in 1757, Lord Chatham's Ministry was formed out 
of every conflicting party ; and it carried the country to the 
highest pitch of glory. This precedent was cited by Mr. Fox and 
Mr. Burke in defence of the coalition with Lord North ; and 
though the diversity of facts did not well justify the application, 
there can be no doubt of the principle in proof of which it was 
referred to. The coalition sought by many, to be effected between 
Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt in 1784 and 1804, could only be grounded 
upon the necessity of giving the country a good and vigorous 
Government; and the junction of Lord Grenville and the Whigs 
in 1804, and afterwards in office, was dictated, as it was trium- 
phantly defended, by their agreement on some great questions, and 
their disposition to sacrifice lesser points of opinion, and all per- 
sonal considerations, to the important object of promoting those 
grand principles in which they coincided. But in all these cases, 
and in none more than the last, there were various differences of 
principle ; not only were Whig and Tory, Alarmist and Reformer, 
to coalesce ; but during the war, and for the sake of carrying it on 
to a better issue, they who were the authors of it, were united 
with its constant and sturdy opponents. Yet all men approved 
of the union, because lesser things should yield to greater, and 
upon one or two great questions there was a fortunate concurrence 
of opinion. It would be very difficult, however, in the present 
case, to find the subject upon which the new allies did not agree 
— Catholic Question — Currency — Free Trade — Judicial Reform — 
Foreign Policy — South American Independence — on all these they 
had for years fought side by side ; on all these they had been 
combating together against the Ministers who lately resigned ; 
W^ile, with the exception of Parliamenta; ^ Reform, upon which 

3* 



58 STATE OF PARTIES. 

the members of the same party differed among themselves, there 
was not a single practical point of dissension to be descried. Any 
two, almost any one of those great subjects was important enough 
to justify a union, even had the parties differed upon most of the 
others; but when the agreement extended over the whole, can 
anv man seriously maintain that it was not their duty to coalesce, 
if their cordial co-operation could alone secure the success of their 
common principles, and the exclusion from power of their common 
adversaries ? 

It has been said, that there is in the Cabinet, as now composed, 

an admixture of members unfavourable to the Catholic Claims, 

and reports have reached us of very strong, but not perhaps very 

well considered objections being taken on this head. Beside our 

former general argument, we shall content ourselves with two 

observations in reply. The first is, that three members in the 

whole Cabinet, and these in no way connected, either with the 

head of the Administration, or with the management of Irish 

affairs, do not alter the features of tolerance and liberality impressed 

upon it by the union which has created the rest of the body 

The other is, that such a criticism proceeds with a strange air from 

the ancient friends and associates of Mr. Fox, who, in 1783, took 

office with Lord Shelburne, differing from him, as he afterwards 

avowed, on many points, and extremely reluctant ever to join him, 

and with Lord Thurlow, whom he had all his life been opposing 

upon all points, and who had held the Great Seal during the 

American war. But still more marvellous is such a remark from 

any who held office in Mr. Fox's last Administration ! Is it really 

forgotten already how the Cabinet of 1806 was composed ? There 

was at its head Lord Grenville — the colleague and kinsman of Mr. 

Pitt— the main promoter of the first war, and instigator to the 

second — -the author of the letter to Bonaparte, which prolonged it 

from 1800 — the staunch enemy of reform- — the avowed friend 

and protector of the Welleslep \n Jadia, A^inst him were t£ 



STAtfc of pAr'tieS. 59 

be set Mr. Fox and Mr. Grey, peacemakers, reformers, managers 
of Indian Impeachments. Then came Mr. Windham and Lord 
Fitzwilliam, the administrators of Mr. Burke's fury, as their new 
colleagues had often termed them, and going as much beyond the 
Grenvilles in hatred of peace, as they exceeded the Foxites in fond- 
ness of war. It is true, that all these great men strenuously sup- 
ported the Catholic Claims ; but those claims were as vehemently 
opposed by other members of the Cabinet, by Lord Ellenborough 
and by Lord Sidmouth, whose former accession to office had beev 
expressly grounded upon his hostility to the question. Yet the 
exigencies of the State induced Mr. Fox and Mr. Grey to form 
parts of this Cabinet, where the interest of Ireland was so little 
consulted, that by common consent the subject was not to be men- 
tioned, unless in order to bring forward a small measure, no sooner 
attempted than abandoned. It is true, that one great and right- 
eous deed was done, in spite of all the divisions which variegated 
the aspect of this motley piece of Cabinet-making; they abolished 
the Slave Trade ; but not because they agreed upon this any more 
than upon those penal laws which they left unrepealed ; for Lord 
Sidmouth, Lord Moira, and Lord Fitzwilliam, were determined 
enemies of the measure, and Mr. Windham was perhaps the most 
zealous of all its antagonists, not to be a planter.* 

We have been meeting the two opposite objections made to the 
late coalition, by twc very different classes of adversaries, the Ilioh 
Tories, who exclaimed against it as an unn-itural and unprincipled 
league for power, at the expense of constancy ; and a few much 
r^pected members of the old WMg party, whose accusations were 
less precise, but who seemed to dislike it only because persons once 
their antagonists formed a branch of it ; an objection to which 

* It will not be supposed that we are painting the Administration of 
1806 as we ourselves view it: we are showing in what light the facts 
would justify its enemies in now representing it, upon the grounds on 
which some of its members are opposing the present Government, 



6$ §fAfE ofr PAR11£§. 

every coalition must be equally liable. The answer to all thes* 
attacks is plain and simple. The inconsistency would have been 
in men continuing the conflict when they were no longer divided 
in the'./ sentiments ; the unnatural conduct would have been for 
men to attack their natural allies and join their natural enemies 
the disregard of principle would have been shown by those whc 
sacrificed their public duty to personal views, and regardless of 
their pledged opinions, sought the gratification of personal feelings, 
not the less personal, nor the more amiable, because they were 
those of hatred, jealousy, or vexation. 

But suppose we come down to a more humble level in the 
argument, and listen to the suggestion, why did the Whigs join 
Mr. Canning, when, by holding out, they must have occasioned a 
total change? We are far from being: satisfied that such a change 
was preferable to the united Ministry ; we are sure the union wavS 
more acceptable to the country as well as to the court ; but we 
answer the question as it is put, and after the manner of our 
nation, we answer it by propounding another — W^hat was to hinder 
Mr. Canning from joining his former colleagues, and submitting to 
fill a second place, a submission which the Whigs would then have 
forced him to? If he found himself disappointed in the estimate 
he had formed of his new allies ; if he found that all their regard 
fur their common principles could not overcome their selfish lust 
of power, or mitigate their equally selfish hatred of him, had he 
not a right to distrust them, and to prefer any government which 
perpetuated their exclusion ? Then, suppose he had been driven 
out of office, was there no chance of his rejoining his former cob 
leagues, and no possibility of this union effecting at court the 
downfall of a party, which had showed so little moderation as tc 
gain no credit with the Sovereign, and so little regard for its long 
professed principles, as to lose all respect in the country? As for 
the only other event that can be stated, it raa; be spoken of, but 
it surely cannot be conceived possible ; we allude to the Whiga 



If ATE OF PARWE8. 61 

joining those ministers who had resigned, and uniting with thern 
in opposing their liberal colleagues. We at once pronounce sc 
prodigious an inconsistency impossible. It would have been aban- 
doning all their principles either to storm the government, or spite 
a former opponent, whose recent conduct upon all great questions 
*j{ policy they had loudly applauded. It was as impossible for 
them to think of such a course, as it now would be for those mo*t 
eminent and respected individuals, whose alienation from th* 
government we join the whole country in deploring, to unite them- 
selves with men, whom they differ from upon every question ot 
public policy, and to seek with them the overthrow of a Ministry ? 
all whose principles they profess. 

In the remarks which we have made, nothing, we trust, has 
escaped us, tending to evince the least disrespect for the principles 
of party, so essential to the existence of a free government. 
Those attachments arising from similarity of principle, are in truth 
the very ground-work of our argument. They have in all good 
times, and among the best men, been held pure and patriotic bonds 
of union ; honourable to the individuals, profitable to the common- 
wealth. Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny, that in proportion 
as the body of the people become more enlightened, and take a 
more constant interest in the management of their own affairs, 
such combinations becoming less necessary, lose somewhat of the 
public favour ; and we believe that at no period of our history 
did, what is called ' Party,' enjoy less popularity and exert less 
influence with the bulk of the community. It may indeed be 
affirmed with safety, that the efforts and the personal weight of 
individuals, have, of late years, done far more to keep alive the 
power and authority of Parties, than the influence of party lias 
done for the protection of their particular members. A new cast- 
ing also of political sects has taken place ; the distinctions, and 
almost the names, of Loyalist and Jacobin, Whig and Tory, CouH 
and Country Faction, are fast wearing pway. Two great division! 



62 gmfc of i^fe'rifiS. 

of the community will, in all likelihood, soon be far more gene- 
rally known ; the Liberal and the Illiberal, who will divide, but 
we may be sure most unequally, the suffrages of the Nation. 

Nor is it in name only that this arrangement will be new ; the 
people will be differently distributed ; the coalition, which has been 
gradually forming among the public men whose personal respect 
and mutual confidence has brought about so fortunate a union, 
extends to the community at large. Some of the older questions, 
by which Whig and Tory were wont to be divided, retain all their 
importance ; but, upon these, the Liberal party, of whatever deno- 
mination, are well agreed. Indeed, it used to be a saying of Mr. 
Wilberforce, when he regarded the importance of those questions, 
compared with the ones they still differed about, that he would 
not answer to the name of Tory ; conveying thereby, as that great 
man is wont, a lesson of his mild wisdom with the relish of 
attractive and harmless wit. The only consequence with respect 
to doctrines which such a junction can produce, is likely to be 
beneficial both to the State and to the progress of sound opinion. 
Extremes will be avoided ; alterations in our system will be 
gradual ; and the only risk which the existence, or the measures 
of a Liberal Government could run, will be avoided — that of a 
reaction against them, — when it is distinctly perceived by all men, 
that we are governed by individual?, whose great parts are tin del 
the control of sound discretion, and whose conduct is, in all things 
tempered with the moderation of practical wisdom. 



SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 

APRIL 5, 1830, 

On the " Bill to Repeal the Civil Disabilities affecting BribiK 
born Subjects professing the Jewish Religion" 

In spite of the parallel which my hon. friend (the member for 
Oxford) has attempted — I think in vain — to draw between this 
case and the Roman Catholic measure before the House during the 
last Session of Parliament, I trust that we shall not have to forego 
the votes of many of those hon. Gentlemen who in the last Session 
were opposed to the concession of the Catholic claims. Indeed, 
many of those Gentlemen will be precluded, by the course they 
then took, from offering any opposition to the present measure. 
The general principle of religious toleration was involved in the 
question of last year, as it is now : but most of those Gentlemen 
who voted against the Roman Catholics declared in favour of this 
general principle, only they found that there were special circum- 
stances which took the case of the Roman Catholics out of the 
pale of that principle. But, Sir, there are no such circumstances 
here. In this instance, there is no foreign power to be feared. 
There is no divided allegiance threatening the State — there are no 
bulls — there are no indigencies — there are no dispensations — there 
is no priesthood exercising an absolute authority over the con- 
sciences of those who are under their spiritual control — there are 
no agitators rousing and exciting the people to a course contrary 
to all good government— there are no associations assembling, or 

Hansard's Parliamentary Debat^ 2d series, voL xsiii. 1830, p. 1308-131$. 



64 

charges with assembling, for the purpose of assuming a power 
which ought only to belong to legally recognized functionaries — 
there are no mobs, disciplined to their task, and almost in the 
regular training of arms — there is no rent levied with the regular- 
ity of a tax. It was the fashion last year to declaim about a go- 
vernment that yielded to clamor, opposition, or threats, having 
betrayed the sacredness of its office, but there can be none such 
here ; for even those most opposed to the present measure cannot 
deny that the Jews have borne their deprivations long in silence, 
and are now complaining with mildness and decency. As a con- 
trast to this, the Roman Catholics w r ere always described as an 
insinuating, restless, cunning, watchful sect, ever on the search 
how they might increase their power and the number of their sect, 
pressing for converts in every possible way, and only withheld by 
the want of power from following up their ancient persecutions. 
But the sect with which we now have to deal are even more prone 
to monopolize their religion than the others are to propagating the 
Catholic faith. Never has such a thing been heard of as an attempt 
on the part of the Jews to gain proselytes; and we' may conclude, 
that with such rites and forms as belong to their faith, it could 
scarcely be expected by any one that a scheme of proselytism 
could succeed with them. Be that, however, as it may, it is a 
thing at which they never appear to have aimed. On the con- 
trary, they have always discouraged such an idea. Let the history 
of England be examined, and it will furnish topics enough against 
the Catholics. Those who have looked for such things have 
always found enough to talk about as to the crimes they have 
committed: the fires in Smithfield — the Gunpowder Plot— -the 
Seven Bishops — have always afforded copious matter upon which 
to launch out in invective against the Catholics. But with respect 
to the Jews, the history of England affords events exactly oppo- 
site : its pages, as to these people,, are made up of wrongs suffered 
and injuries endured by them, without a trace of any wrong or 



jews' disabilities bill. 65 

injury committed in return ; they are made up, from the beginning 
to the end, of atrocious cruelties inflicted on the one hand, and 
grievous privation* endured for conscience-sake on the other. 
With respect to all Christian sects, their changes of situation have 
always afforded scope for charges of mutual recrimination against 
one another; but every one allows the side on which the balance 
between the Jew and the Christian is weighed down. As to the 
opposition offered to this Bill by my hon. friend, I am at a loss to 
see on what he has grounded it, unless he takes the broad prin- 
ciple, that no one who is not a Christian is to be entrusted with 
power, ms his rule of action ; I am at a loss to see how he can refuse 
bis assent to or oppose this measure without throwing himself open 
to the charge of inconsistency. If this Bill, like the Roman Ca- 
tholic one of last Session, is to be opposed, it is condemning the 
strong and the weak, the violent and the patient, the proselyting 
and the exclusive, the political and the religious. If this is the 
ionise that is to be taken for our guide, persecution will never 
want an excuse, and the wolf will ever be able to invent a pretence 
to hear down and destroy the lamb. If this is to be the maxim 
set up tor our land-mark, it will soon appear that every thing may 
be a reason with the aggressor, as every thing is shown to be a 
crime in the aggressed. In all the opposition that was lately 
evinced against the Catholics, it was never once assumed or pre- 
tended that the opposition was religious ; it was political, and 
nothing else. "When the object was to excite ill blood and rancour 
in the country— -when red-hot speeches and tub-sermons went forth 
on the subject, the people were told that the question was, whether 
they should be compelled to worship stocks and stones, instead of 
the true God ? But this was a point yA view never alluded to by 
the move distinguished and candid opponents 01 ^ Catholic 
chums. I myself remember having heard the Earl of Elcio.. 
declare that it was not on religious but on political grounds, that 
be was opposed to the measure. The question Just at that time 



66 JEWS DISABILITIES BILL. 

under consideration was that of Transubstantiation ; and the noble 
and learned Lord observed that it was not because the Catholics 
believed in the real presence that they were objected to, but that 
b-^ing the test by which they were kept out, they were through 
that kept out, because they were not good subjects. But now the 
whole case is changed. Political objection is fairly given up ; and 
in its place religious persecution is avowed. In all that my hon. 
friend, the member for Oxford, has offered to the House, I have 
traced but two political objections ; and neither of them appeals to 
me to be entitled to the weight which my hon. friend would give 
to them. The first political argument that my hon. friend has 
adduced aoainst this measure is, that the Jews of this country are 
more attached to their nation — wandering and scattered as they 
are over the face of the earth — than they are to the people of 
England. The only answer that I shall offer to this, is, that at all 
events it is exceedingly unfair to lay down this as an objection till 
we have tried the experiment whether, by making Englishmen of 
them, they will not become members of the community. Till that 
has been done, all we can say is. that as long as they are not English- 
men they are nothing but Jews. The other objection of my hon. 
friend appears to me to be more extraordinary still. He says that 
if this measure be granted, the power of the Jews will be such that 
they will come into Parliament in a much greater number than is 
proportioned to their relative number in the country, and the con- 
sequence of this will be to destroy the present system of represen- 
tation, which will be rendered odious to the people, and a reform 
in Parliament must ensue. All that I can see in this argument is, 
that the Jews will not get into Parliament, because we are labour- 
ing under a bad ^H^ of representation. At all events, the sys- 
tem * J " ,L we l )ave at P^sent must be either good or bad. If the 
system is bad, it is evident that the sooner we get rid of it the 
better! If the system is gcod, why should we complain of that to 
which it naturally tends ? These objections seem to be the onlv 



JfcWS* DtSA&ILfrTIES BILL. 67 

political objections that my bon. friend has urged against llie mea- 
sure now before the House, aud all the rest may be characterised 
as purely religious persecution. But even when my hon. friend 
has brought himself to that, he does not pretend to say that he 
opposes the Bill because the religion of the Jews is dangerous. 
No such pretence is put forth at all. No such outcry as that raised 
last session is heard now. The opposition which has made its 
appearance now is, if I may use the phrase without giving offence 
to mv hon. friend, nothing but the offal — nothing but the leavino-s 
of the intolerance which was so abundant last yeai. A.11 that the 
House has been told is, that the Jews are not Christians, and that 
therefore they must not have power. But this has not been 
declared openly and ingenuously, as it once was. Formerly the 
persecution of the Jews was at least consistent. The thing was 
made complete once by taking away their property, their libertv, 
ami their lives. My hon. friend is now equally vehement as to 
taking away their political power; and vet, no doubt, he would 
shudder at what such a measure would really take away. The 
only power that my hon. friend seems to wish to deprive the Jews 
<>f is to consist in maces, gold chains, and skins of parchment, with 
pieces of wax dangling at the ends of them. But he is leaving 
them all the things that bestow real power. lie allows them to 
have property, and in these times property is power, mighty and 
overwhelming power — he allows them to have knowledge, and 
knowledge is no less power. Then why is all this power poisoned 
by intolerance? Why is the Jew to have the power of a principal 
over his clerk — of a master over his servant — of a landlord over 
his tenant ? Why is he to have all this, which is power, and yet 
to be deprived of the fair and natural consequences of this power? 
Why, having conceded all this, is my hon. friend afterwards to 
turn round and say, " You shall have all these real effects and 
advantages of your situation, but in the fair sequence of their pos- 
session, vou shall be crippled and borne down." As things no'W 



68 .TEWS* DISABILITIES fiftt. 

stand, a Jew may be the richest man in England — he ma) possess 
the whole of London — his interest may be the means of raising 
this party or depressing that — of making East-India directors, or 
sending members into Parliament — the influence of the Jew may 
be of the first consequence in a war which shall be the means of 
shaking all Europe to its centre. His power may come into pla) 
in assisting or retarding the greatest plans of the greatest Princes ; 
and yet, with all this confessed, acknowledged, undenied, my lion. 
friend would have them deprived of power I If, indeed, my hon. 
friend would have things thus arranged, I would put a question to 
him thus : — -Does he not think that wealth confers power ? If it do, 
can he be prepared to say that the Jews shall not have power ? If it 
do not, where are we to draw the line ? How are we to permit all 
the consequences of their wealth but one ? I cannot conceive the 
nature of an argument that is to bear out such a position. If it 
was to be full and entire persecution, after the consistent example 
of our ancestors, I could understand it. If we were called on to 
revert to the days, when, as a people, they were pillaged — when 
their warehouses were torn down — when their every right was 
sacrificed, the thing would be comprehensible. But this is a deli- 
cate persecution, with no abstract rule for its guidance. As to the 
matter of right, if the word f legal 1 ' is to be attached to it, I am 
bound to acknowledge that the Jews have no legal right to power ; 
but in the same way, 300 years ago, they had no legal right to 
be in England ; and 600 years ago they had no right to the teeth 
in their heads : but if it is the moral right we are to look at, I say, 
that on every principle of moral obligation, I hold that the Jew has 
a right to political power. Every man has a right to all that may 
conduce to his pleasure, if it does not inflict pain on any one else 
This is one of the broadest maxims of human nature, and I can no: 
therefore see how its supporters can be fairly called upon to defend 
it — the onus proband! lies, not on the advocates of freedom, but on 
the advocates of restraint. Let my hon. friend first show that 



Jews' disabilities bill. 69 

there is some danger — some injury to the State, likely to arise 
from the admission of the Jews, and then will be the time to call 
upon us to answer the case that he has made out. Till such an 
argument, however, is fully made out, I shall contend for the moral 
right of the Jews. That they wish to have access to the privilege 
of sitting in Parliament has already been shown ; it now remains 
to show that some harm is calculated to result from that admis- 
sion. Unless this is shown, the refusal is neither more nor less than 
persecution. My lion, friend put a different interpretation upon 
the particular word I have used ; but the meaning will still remain 
the same; and when we come to define the sense, it must be 
found, that we are only quibbling about a word. Any person may 
build a theory upon phrases : with some, perhaps, burning would 
be persecution, while the screwing of thumbs would not be perse- 
cution ; others may call the screwing of thumbs persecution, and 
deny the justice of that expression when used to whipping. But 
according to my impression, the infliction of any penalties on account 
of religious opinions, and on account of religious opinions alone, is 
generally understood as coming within the meaning of the term, for 
all the purposes of political argument. It is as much persecution in 
principle as an auto da fe, the only difference is in degree. Defin- 
ing persecution, then, as I do, I cannot conceive any argument to be 
adduced in favour of the mildest degree of this injustice, which, 
logically speaking, though not morally, indeed, might not be used 
with equal force in favour of the most cruel inflictions from similar 
motives. I have to make my apology for having occupied so much 
of the time of the hon. gentlemen present ; but I could not refrain 
from making known my sentiments to this House of Commons, 
which has done more for the rights of conscience than any Parlia- 
ment that ever sat. Its sessions of 1828 and 1829 have been 
marked by a glorious course in favour of religious liberty ; and I 
hope that, before our separation, this Session of 1830 will put tin 



70 JEWS' DISABILITIEb **ILL. 

finishing hand to that work which so many great and good men 
wish to see accomplished, hut which cannot be, till this most desi- 
rable measure shall be carried into effect. 

Note. In his speech on this subject, which followed, Sir James Macintosh 
said, " The speech which they had herrd from his Honourable and Learned 
Friend was one which, he had no doubt, would make its full impression on 
the House, it being every way worthy of the name he bore." 



71 



SLAVERY IN THE WEST INDIES.* 

dec. 13, 1830. 

On the Presentation of a Petition from West India Planters, anci 
others interested in Property in the Wed Indies. 

If the petitioners who ask for compensation, and if the noble 
Marquis who presented the petition, and the hon. Member who 
spoke last but one, had confined themselves to the subject of com- 
pensation, he should not have thought it necessary to say one word 
on the subject. He thought — he believed the public also thought 
— that compensation ought to be given. He agreed with the noble 
Lord and the hon. Gentleman, and he agreed, too, with the peti- 
tioners, that whenever slavery was extinguished, all the loss of pro- 
perty which might arise should be made good by the Government. 
lie agreed in this opinion, not because he agreed with what fell 
from the hon. Member for Dumfries, which, by the by, he did not 
understand, about the compact of society. He did not see from 
that species of metaphysical argument how protection for property 
was necessary ; but it was found by experience that it was bad for 
men that property should not be secured, and that great inconve- 
nience resulted from violating property, and on that ground, it was 
said, that men ought to have their property protected. After the 
public had declared, by Acts of Parliament, thai men should be 
property, after they had been bought and sold, deposited as pledges, 
and made to answer for dowers, great inconvenience would result 
from taking away that species of property, and the masteis and 

* JJanrard, 3d Series, vol i. p. 1064-$. 



72 SLAVERY IN THE WEST INDIES. 

owners ought to be compensated. He declared, that he thought, 
in common with most of those who petitioned the Hojse, that 
slavery ought to be extinguished ; but he and the petitioners all 
contemplated, on its extinction, giving a reasonable compensation 
to the masters of slaves. If, therefore, the noble Lord and the 
lion. Gentleman had confined themselves to compensation, which 
he admitted was just, he should not have said one word on the 
subject ; but they had mingled other matters with that which lie 
always wished to see separated from it. He agreed that exagge- 
ration could not do any good, and he regretted, as much as the 
noble Lord and the hon. Member for Dumfries, that either anger or 
exaggeration should have been displayed on either side. It was a 
charge against the petitions for the abolition, that they were all 
got up under the influence of the Anti-Slavery Society. The peti- 
tions were got up under that influence — was that extraordinary ? 
Who should inform the people of England, busily employed in 
their own domestic occupations, of what occurred in the West 
Indies, if some such Society did not undertake the task ? But the 
influence the Society possessed was over the public mind. It had no 
other. It appealed to the public reason. It had no monopoly of 
the public Press. Its reports and proceedings were open to cavil 
and objection. The periodical literature was as much in the hands 
of the West Indians as their opponents. Magazines and Reviews 
were on their side ; of celebrated works, he believed that The Quar- 
terly Review had always been in their favour. He did not believe 
that there was one of those periodical publications which were most 
read — he meant the newspapers — he did not believe that there was 
one of the London newspapers that was fully and completely on the 
side of the' abolitionists. The organs of the West-India body were 
as numerous as those of the other side, and their funds were at 
least equal to those of the Anti-Slavery Society. It was not long 
ago that the West-India body gave as much to one writer as the 
Anti-Slavery Society received and employed in a year. Th8 fact 



SLAVERY IN THE WF.S1 IVtMfiS. 73 

was, that the West-India body was in the wrong. All men were 
active to embrace the opposite opinions. They had been progres- 
sively gaining ground, and all the efforts of the West-Indians had 
failed to stem the tide of public opinion. They had been trying 
since 1802, and were carried further and further away every year 
from their object. The public feeling since that time had ebbed 
and flowed somewhat, but, on the whole, it had been much 
strengthened. After every ebb it had only run upwards with 
double vigour. It required that slavery should be abolished ; it 
required, in the interest of the West-Indians themselves, as well as 
in the interest of the slaves, and in the interest of the country 
generally, that the question should be brought to a speedy conclu- 
sion, and that the slaves should be emancipated. The petitions, it 
was said, were violent ; but, though nobody supposed violence was 
good, what good cause had escaped being disfigured by violence ? 
The Christian religion itself at its origin was disfigured by many 
pious frauds, and fanatics then abounded. Such was the case, too, 
at the Reformation, and much violence was instrumental in bring- 
ing it to a conclusion. For his part, he did not charge the West- 
India body with the calumny that w r as uttered against the 
abolitionists. The body, he knew, contained many honourable 
men, who were free from all suspicion of such a charge, and who 
scouted as much as any honourable men could, those people 
who lived by slander and traded in violent abuse, and in whom the 
ideas of calumny and their dinner were inseparably associated. 
lie would do justice to the West-Indians, and let them do justice 
to their opponents. Let neither party recriminate any longer. 
Let them all consider the matter like statesmen and legislators. 
Let them ask themselves, was there any evil, and was there a 
remedy for it? Were they the people who ought to apply the 
remedy, and was this the time? If this were the time, and they 
were the people, he would implore them to apply the remedy. 
He- saw that there were many difficulties in the wav of it; but b a 

VOL. I. -i 



^4 sf.AVKnv i* the West iNbifcs. 

thought those difficulties would readily vanish if the subject wetft 
taken up by statesmen of a capacious intellect and resolute heart. 
The statesmen who had lately taken office were of that character : 
in them he had great confidence, and he had no doubt that they 
would bring forward the question in a proper manner. When it 
was brought forward, he, for one, wished that it should be with a 
view to extinguish the system of slavery ; but he wished it brought 
forward carefully, with temperance, avoiding all causes of irritation, 
and all violence of language : he wished the question looked at as 
a whole, and that it should be discussed with a sincere desire to 
come to a calm and deliberate decision, and to do every interest 
justice. 



< .'» 



ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.* 

March 2, 1831. 

In the adjourned Debati on the motion, " that leave be given t« 
bring in a Bill to amend the Representation of the people of 
England and Wales" 

It is a circumstance, Sir, of happy augury for the measure before 
the House, that almost all those who have opposed it have declared 
themselves altogether hostile to the principle of Reform. Two 
Members, I think, have professed, that though they disapprove of 
the plan now submitted to us, they yet conceive some alteration 
of the Representative system to be advisable. Yet even those 
Gentlemen have used, as far as I have observed, no arguments 
winch would not apply as strongly to the most moderate change, 
as to that which has been proposed by his Majesty's Government. 
I say, Sir, that I consider this as a circumstance of happy augury. 
For what I feared was, not the opposition of those who shrink 
from all Reform, — but the disunion of reformers. I knew, that 
during three months every reformer had been employed in con- 
jecturing what the plan of the Government would be. I knew, that 
every reformer had imagined in his own mind a scheme differing 
doubtless in some points from that which my noble friend, the 
Paymaster of the Forces, has developed. I felt therefore great 
apprehension that one person would be dissatisfied with one 
part of the Bill, that another person would be dissatisfied with 
another part, and that thus our whole strength would be wasted 

• Hansard, 3d Serie*. Vol. ii, 1S8Q-31, p. 1190-I3Q& 



76 PARLJAMENTARY REFORM. 

in internal dissensions. That apprehension is now at an end. 1 
have seen with delight the perfect concord which prevails among 
all who deserve the name of reformers in this House, and I trust 
that I may consider it as an omen of the concord which will 
prevail among reformers throughout the country. I will not, Sir, 
at present express any opinion as to the details of the Bill; but 
having during the last twenty-four hours, given the most diligent 
consideration to its general principles, I have no hesitation in 
pronouncing it a wise, noble, and comprehensive measure, skilfully 
framed for the healing of great distempers, for the securing at 
once of the public liberties and of the public repose, and for the 
reconciling and knitting together of all the orders of the State. 
The hon. Baronet (Sir John Walsh) who has just sat down has 
told us, that the Ministers have attempted to unite two inconsistent 
principles in one abortive measure. He thinks, if I understand 
him rightly, that they ought either to leave the representative 
system such as it is, or to make it symmetrical. I think, Sir, that 
they would have acted unwisely if they had taken either of these 
courses. Their principle is plain, rational, and consistent. It is 
this, — to admit the middle class to a large and direct share in the 
Representation, without any violent ^hock to the institutions of our 
country [hear!] I understand those cheers — but surely the 
Gentlemen who utter them will allow, that the change made in 
our institutions by this measure is far less violent than that which, 
according to the hon. Baronet, ought to be made if we make any 
Reform at ail. I praise the Ministers for not attempting, under 
existing circumstances, to make the Representation uniform — 1 
praise them for not effacing the old distinction between the towns 
and the counties, — for not assigning Members to districts, according 
to the American practice, by the. Rule of Three. They have done 
all that was necessary for the removing of a great practical evil, 
and no more than was necessary. I consider this, Sir, as a 
practical question. I rest my opinion on no general theory of 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 77 

government — I distrust all general theories of govern nieiit; I will 
not positively say, that there is any form of polity which may not, 
under some conceivable circumstances, be the best possible. I 
believe that there are societies in which every man may safely be 
admitted to vote [hear/] Gentlemen may cheer, but such is my 
opinion. I say, Sir, that there are countries in which the condition 
of the labouring classes is such that they may safely be intrusted 
with the right of electing Members of the Legislature. If the 
laborers of England were in that state in which I, from my soul, 
wish to see them, — if employment were always plentiful, wages 
always high, food always cheap, — if a large family were considered 
not as an encumbrance, but as a blessing — the principal objections 
to Universal Suffrage would, I think, be removed. Universal 
Suffrage exists in the United States without producing any very 
frightful consequences ; and I do not believe, that the people of 
those States, or of any part of # the world, are in any good quality 
naturally superior to our own countrymen. But, unhappily, the 
lower orders in England, and in all old countries, are occasionally 
in a state of great distress. Some of the causes of this distress are, 
I fear, beyond the control of the Government. We know what 
effect distress produces, even on people more intelligent than the 
great body of the laboring classes can possibly be. We know 
that it makes even wise men irritable, unreasonable, and credu- 
lous — eager for immediate relief — heedless of remote consequences. 
There is no quackery in medicine, religion, or politics, which may 
not impose even on a powerful mind, when that mind has been 
disordered by pain or fear. It is therefore no reflection on the 
lower orders of Englishmen, who are not, and who cannot in the 
nature of things be highly educated, to say that distress produces 
on them its natural effects, those effects which it would produce 
on the Americans, or on any other people, — that it blunts their 
judgment, that it inflames their passions, that it makes them 
prone to believe those who flatter tbem, and to distrust those who 



78 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

w ov Id serve them. For the sake, therefore, of tlie whole society, 
for the sake of the labouring classes themselves, I hold it to be 
clearly expedient, that in a country like this, the right of suffrage 
should depend on a pecuniary qualification. Every argument, 
Sir, which would induce me to oppose Universal Suffrage, induces 
me to support the measure which is now before us. I oppose 
Universal Suffrage, because I think that it would produce ? 
destructive revolution. I support this measure, because I am sure 
that it is our best security against a revolution. The noble Pay- 
master of the Forces hinted, delicately indeed and remotely, at 
this subject. lie spoke of the danger of disappointing the 
expectations of the nation ; and for this he was charged with 
threatening the House. Sir, in the year 1817, the late Lord 
Londonderry proposed a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. 
On that occasion he told the House, that, unless the measures 
which he recommended were adopted, the public peace could not 
be preserved. Was he accused of threatening the House ? 
Again, in the year 1819, he brought in the bills known by the 
name of the Six Acts. He then told the House, that, unless the 
executive power were reinforced, all the institutions of the country 
would be overturned by popular violence. Was he then accused 
of threatening the House ? Will any Gentleman say, that it is 
parliamentary and decorous to urge the danger arising from 
popular discontent as an argument for severity ; but that it is 
unparliamentary and indecorous to urge that same danger as an 
argument for conciliatory measures? I, Sir, do entertain great 
apprehension for the fate of my country. I do in my conscience 
believe, that unless this measure, or some similar measure, be 
speedily adopted, great and terrible calamities will befal us. 
Entertaining this opinion, I think myself bound to state it, not as 
a threat, but as a reason. I support this measure as a measure 
of Reform : but I support it still more as a measure of coiiserva, 
Uo&f Tfcat we may exclude \fo m whom \\ jg Ji§G#wy to exclude 



PAfcLTAMENTAHV REFORM. 70 

We must admit those whom it may be safe to admit. At present 
we oppose the schemes of revolutionists with only one half, with 
only one quarter of our proper force. We say, ami we say 
justly, that it is not by mere numbers, but by property and 
intelligence, that the nation ought to be governed. Yet, saying 
this, we exclude from all share in the government vast masses of 
property and intelligence, — vast numbers of those who are most 
interested in preserving tranquillity, and who know best how to 
preserve it. We do more. We drive over to the side of revolu- 
tion those whom we shut out from power. Is this a time when 
the cause of law and order can spare one of its natural allies ? My 
noble friend, the Paymaster of the Forces, happily described the 
effect which some parts of our representative system would produce 
on the mind of a foreigner, who had heard much of our freedom 
and greatness. If, Sir, I wished to make such a foreigner clearly 
understand what I consider as the great defects of our system, I 
would conduct him through that great city which lies to the north 
of Great Russell-street and Oxford-street, — a citv superior in size 
and in population to the capitals of many mighty kingdoms ; and 
probably superior in opulence, intelligence, and general respecta- 
bility, to any city in the world. I would conduct him through 
that interminable succession of streets and squares, all consisting 
of well-built and well furnished houses. I would make him 
observe the brilliancy of the shops, and the crowd of well-appointed 
equipages. I would lead him round that magnificent circle of 
palaces which surrounds the RegentVpark. I would tell him, that 
the rental of this district was far greater than that of the whole 
kingdom of Scotland, at the time of the Union. And then I 
would tell him, that this was an unrepresented district ! It is 
needless to give any more instances. It is needless to speak 
of Manchester. Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, with no repre- 
sentation ; or of Edinburgh and Glasgow with a mock repre- 
sentation. If a property-tax w<-re now imposed on the old 



§0 PAULlAMftNTAKY tUCJttilClli 

principle, that no person who had less than 150/. a year 
shoaid contribute, I should not be surprised to find, that one-half 
in number and value of the contributors had no votes at all ; and it 
would, beyond all doubt, be found, that one-fiftieth part in number 
and value of the contributors had a larger share of the representa- 
tion than the other fortv-nine fiftieths. This is not government bv 
property. It is government by certain detached portions and 
fragments of property, selected from the rest, and preferred to the 
rest, on no rational principle whatever. To say that such a system 
is ancient is no defence. My hon. friend, the member for the 
University of Oxford (Sir R. Tnglis), challenges us to show, that 
the Constitution was ever better than it is. Sir, we are legislators, 
not antiquaries. The question for us is, not whether the Constitu- 
tion was better formerly, but whether we can make it better now. 
In fact, however, the system was not in ancient times by any 
means so absurd as it is in our age. One noble Lord (Lord 
Stormont) has to-night told us, that the town of Aldborough, 
which he represents, was not larger in the time of Edward I. than 
it is at present. The line of its walls, he assures us. may still be 
traced. It is now built up to that line. lie argues, therefore, 
that, as the founders of our representative institutions gave Mem- 
bers to Aldborough when it was as small as it now is, those who 
would disfranchise it on account of its small ness have no right tc 
say, that they are recurring to the original principle of our repre- 
sentative institutions. But does the noble Lord remember the 
change which has taken place in the country during the last five 
centuries ? Does he remember how much England has grown in 
population, while Aldborough has been standing still ? Does he 
consider, that in the time of Edward I. this part of the island did 
not contain two millions of inhabitants ? It now contains nearly 
fourteen millions. A hamlet of the present day would have been 
a place of some importance in the time of our early Parliaments 
Aldborough may be absolutely as considerable a place as ever 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 81 

But compared uith the kingdom, it is much less considerable, b) 
the noble Lord's own showing, than when it first elected burgesses. 
My hon. friend, the member for the University of Oxford, has 
collected numerous instances of the tyranny which the kings and 
nobles anciently exercised, both over this House, and over the 
electors. It is not strange, that, in times when nothing was held 
sacred, the rights of the people, and of the Representatives of the 
people, should not have been held sacred. The proceedings which 
my hon. friend has mentioned, no more prove, that, by the ancient 
constitution of the realm, this House ought to be a tool of the 
king and of the aristocracy, than the Benevolences and the Ship 
money prove their own legality ; or than those unjustifiable 
arrests, which took place long after the ratification of the great 
Charter, and even after the Petition of Right, prove that the 
subject was not anciently entitled to his personal liberty. We 
talk of the wisdom of our ancestors — and iu one respect at least 
they were wiser than we. They legislated for their own times. 
They looked at the England which was before them. They did 
not think it necessary to give twice as many Members to York as 
thev gave to London, because York had been the capital of 
Britain in the time of Constantius Chlorus ; and they would have 
been amazed indeed if they had foreseen, that a city of more than 
a hundred thousand inhabitants would be left without Representa- 
tives in the nineteenth century, merely because it stood on ground 
which, in the thirteenth century, had been occupied by a few huts. 
They framed a representative system, which was not indeed 
without defects and irregularities, but which was well adapted to 
the state of England in their time. But a great revolution took 
place. The character of the old corporations changed. New 
forms of property came into existence New portions of society 
rose into importance. There were in our rural districts rich 
cultivators, who were not freeholders. There were in our capital 
rich traders, who were not liverymen. Towns shrank into village* 

4* 



§2 PARlJAMfiXtARY REFORM; 

Villages swelled into cities larger than the London' of the PlafV 
tagerets. Unhappily, while the natural growth of society went 
on, the artificial polity continued unchanged. The ancient form 
of the representation remained ; and precisely because the form 
remained, the spirit departed. Then came that pressure almost to 
bursting — the new wine in the old bottles — the new people under 
the old institutions. It is now time for us to pay a decent, a 
rational, a manly reverence to our ancestors — not by superstitiously 
adhering to what they, under other circumstances, did, but by 
doing what they, in our circumstances, would have done. All 
history is full of revolutions, produced by causes similar to those 
which are now operating in England. A portion of the community 
which had been of no account, expands and becomes strong. It 
demands a place in the system, suited, not to its former weakness, 
but to its present power. If this is granted, all is well. If this is 
refused, then comes the struggle between the young energy of 
one class, and the ancient privileges of another. Such was the 
struggle between the Plebeians and the Patricians of Rome. 
Such was the struggle of the Italian allies for admission to the full 
rights of Roman citizens. Such was the struggle of our North 
American colonies against the mother country. Such was the 
struggle which the Tiers Mat of France maintained against the 
aristocracy of birth. Such was the struggle which the Catholics 
of Ireland maintained against the aristocracy of creed. Such is 
the struggle which the free people of colour in Jamaica are now 
maintaining ag:iinst the aristocracy of skin. Such, finally, is the 
struggle which the middle classes in England are maintaining 
against an aristocracy of mere locality — against an aristocracy, the 
principle of which is to invest 100 drunken pot- wallopers in one 
place, or the owner of a ruined hovel in another, with powers 
which are withheld from cities renowned to the furthest ends of 
the earth, for the marvels of their wealth and of their industry. 
But these great cities, says my hon. friend, the member foi 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 83 

Oxford, are virtually, though not directly represented. Are not 
the wishes of Manchester, he asks, as much consulted as those of 
any town which sends Members to Parliament? Now, Sir, I do 
not understand how a power which is salutary when exercised 
virtually, can be noxious when exercised directly. If the wishes 
<>f Manchester have as much weight with us, as they would have 
under a system which should give Representatives to Manchester, 
how can there be any danger in giving Representatives to Man- 
chester ? A virtual Representative is, I presume, a man who acts 
as a direct Representative would act : for surely it would be absurd 
to say, that a man virtually represents the people of property in 
Manchester, who is in the habit of saying No, when a man 
directly representing the people of property in Manchester would 
say Aye. The utmost that can be expected from virtual Repre- 
sentation is, that it may be as good as direct Representation. If 
so, why riot grant direct Representation to places which, as every 
body allows, ought, by some process or other, to be represented '? 
If it be said, that there is an evil in change as change, I answer, 
that there is also an evil in discontent as discontent. This, indeed, 
is the strongest part of our case. It is said that the system works 
well. I deny it. I deny that a system works well, which the 
people regard with aversion. We may say here, that it is a good 
system and a perfect system. But if any man were to say so to 
any 658 respectable farmers or shop-keepers, chosen by lot in anv 
part of England, he would be hooted dawn, and laughed to scorn. 
Are these the feelings with which any part of the Government 
ought to be regarded ? Above all, are these the feelings with 
which the popular branch of the Legislature ought to be regarded ? 
It is almost as essential to the utility of a House of Commons, 
that it should possess the confidence of the people, as that it 
should deserve that confidence. Unfortunately, that which is in 
theory the popular part of our Government, is in practice the 
unpopular part. Who wishes to dethrone the King ? Who 



84 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

wishes to turn the Lords out of their House ? Here and there a 
crazy radical, whom the boys in the street point at as he walks 
along. Who wishes to alter the constitution of this House? The 
whole people. It is natural that it should be so. The House of 
Commons is, in the language of Mr. Burke, a cheek for the 
people — not on the people, but for the people. While that cheek 
is efficient, there is no reason to fear that the King or the nobles 
will oppress the people. But if that check requires checking, how 
is it to be checked ? If the salt shall lose its savour, wherewith 
shall we season it ? The distrust with which the nation regards 
this House maybe unjust. But what then? Can you remove 
that distrust? That it exists cannot be denied. That it. is an 
evil cannot be denied. That it is an increasing evil cannot 
be denied. One Gentleman tells us that it has been produced 
bv the late events in France and Belgium ; another, that 
it is the effect of seditious works which have lately been 
published. If this feeling be of origin so recent, I have read 
history to little purpose. Sir, this alarming discontent is not the 
growth of a day or of a year. If there be any symptoms by 
which it is possible to distinguish the chronic diseases of "the body 
politic from its passing inflammations, all these symptoms exist in 
the present case. The taint has been gradually becoming more 
extensive and more malignant, through the whole life-time of two 
generations. We have tried anodynes. We have tried cruel 
operations. What are we to try now ? Who flatters himself that 
he can turn this feeling back? Does there remain any argument 
which escaped the comprehensive intellect of Mr. Burke, or the 
subtlety of Mr. Wyndham ? Does there remain any species of 
coercion which was not tried by Mr. Pitt and by Lord London- 
derry ? We have had laws. We have had blood. New treasons 
have been created. The Press has been shackled. The Habeas 
Corpus Act has been suspended. Public meetings have been 
prohibited. The event has proved that these expedients \vere 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 85 

mere palliatives. You are at the end of your palliatives. The 
evil remains. It is more formidable than ever. What is to be 
done? Under such circumstances, a great measure of reconcilia- 
tion, prepared by the Ministers of the Crown, has been brought 
before us in a manner which gives additional lustre to a noble 
name, inseparably associated during two centuries with the 
dearest liberties of the English people. I will not say, that the 
measure is in all its details precisely such as I might wish it to be; 
but it is founded on a great and a sound principle. It takes away 
a vast power from a few. It distributes that power through the 
great mass of the middle order. Every man, therefore, who thinks 
as I think, is bound to stand firmly by Ministers, who are resolved 
to stand or fall with this measure. Were I one of them, I would 
sooner — infinitely sooner — fall with such a measure than stand by 
any other means that ever supported a Cabinet. My hon. friend, 
the member for the University of Oxford, tells us, that if we pass 
this law, England will soon be a republic. The reformed House 
of Commons will, according to him, before it has sat ten years, 
depose the King, and expel the Lords from their House. Sir, if 
my hon. friend could prove this, he would have succeeded in 
bringing an argument for democracy, infinitely stronger than any 
that is to be found in the works of Paine. His proposition is in 
fact this — that our monarchical and aristocratical institutions have 
no hold on the public mind of England ; that these institutions are 
regarded wi h aversion by a decided majority of the middle class. 
This, Sir, I say, is plainly deducible from his proposition; for li6 
tells us, that the Representatives of the middle class will inevitably 
abolish loyalty and nobility within ten years: and there is surely 
no reason to think that the Representatives of the middle class 
will be more inclined to a democratic revolution than their con- 
stituents. Now, Sir, if I were convinced that the great body of 
the middle class in England look with aversion on monarchy and 
aristocracy, I should be. forced, much against my will, to come tQ 



86 PAR;.iAY.KNTAKY REFOIIM. 

this conclusion, that monarchical and aristocratical institutions ar' 
unsuited to this country. Monarchy and aristocracy, valuable and 
useful as I think them, are still valuable and useful as means, and 
not as ends. The end of government is the happiness of the 
people : and I do not conceive that, in a country like this, the 
happiness of the people can be promoted by a form of government, 
in which the middle classes place no confidence, and which exists 
only because the middle classes have no organ by which to make 
their sentiments known. But, Sir, I am fully convinced that the 
middle classes sincerely wish to uphold the Royal prerogatives, 
and the constitutional rights of the Peers. What facts does my 
hon. friend produce in support of his opinion ? One fact only — 
and that a fact which has absolutely nothing to do with the 
question. The effect of this Reform, he tells us, would be, to 
make the House of Commons all-powerful. It was all-powerful 
once before, in the beginning of 1649. Then it cut off the head 
of the King, and abolished the House of Peers. Therefore, if this 
Reform should take place, it will act in the same manner. Now, 
Sir, it was not the House of Commons that cut off the head of 
Charles I. ; nor was the House of Commons then all-powerful. 
It had been greatly reduced in numbers by successive expulsions. 
It was under the absolute dominion of the army. A majority of 
the House was willing to take the terms offered by the King. 
The soldiers turned out the majority ; and the minority — not a 
sixth part of the whole House — passed those votes of which my 
hon. friend speaks — votes of which the middle classes disapproved 
then, and of which they disapprove still. My hon. friend, and 
almost all the Gentlemen who have taken the same side with him 
in this Debate, have dwelt much on the utility of close and rotten 
boroughs. It is by means of such boroughs, they tell us, that 
the ablest men have been introduced into Parliament. It is trie, 
that many distinguished persons have represented places of this 
description, But, Sir, we musf> judge of a form of government bv 



PARilAMEKTAftV REFORM. 8* 

its general tendency, not by happy accidents. Every form of 
government has its happy accidents. Despotism lias its happy 
accidents. Vet we are not disposed to abolish all constitutional 
checks, to place an absolute master over us, and to take our chance 
whether l>e mav be a Caligula or a Marcus Aurelius. In what- 
ever way the House of Commons may be chosen, some able men 
will be chosen in that way who would not be chosen in any othei 
way. If there were a law that the hundred tallest men in 
England should be Members of Parliament, there would probably 
be some able men among those who would come into the House 
by virtue of this law. If the hundred persons whose names stand 
first in the alphabetical list of the Court Guide were made Mem- 
bers of Parliament, there would probably be able men among 
them. We read in ancient history, that a very able king was 
elected by the neiglii ng of his hoi-se. But w r e shall scarcely, I 
think, adopt this mode of election. In one of the most celebrated 
republics of antiquity — Athens — the Senators and Magistrates were 
chosen by lot; and sometimes the lot fell fortunatelv. Once, for 
example, Socrates was in office. A cruel and unjust measure was 
brought forward. Socrates resisted it at the hazard of his own 
life. There is no event in Grecian history more interesting than 
that memorable resistance. Yet who would have officers assigned 
by lot, because the accident of the lot may have given to a great 
and good man a power which he would probably never have 
lttained in any other way ? We must judge, as I said, by the 
general tendency of a system. No person can doubt that a House 
of Commons chosen freely by the middle classes will contain many 
very able men. I do not say, that precisely the same able men 
who would find their way into the present House of Commons, 
will find their way into the reformed House — but that is not the 
question. No particular man is necessary to the State. We may 
depend on it, that if we provide the country with free institutions, 
those institutions will provide it with gr^at then. There is another 



88 PAfttiAMESfARt REFOftM. 

objection, which, I think, was first raised by the hon. and learned 
member for Newport (Mr. H. Twiss). He tells us that the electiv* 
franchise is property— -that to take it away from a man who Kan 
not been judicially convicted of any malpractices is robbery — that 
no crime is proved against the voters in the close boroughs — that 
no crime is ever imputed to them in the preamble of the Bill — and 
that to disfranchise them without compensation, would therefore 
be an act of revolutionary tyranny. The hon. and learned Gentle- 
man has compared the conduct of the present Ministers to that of 
those odious tools of power, who, towards the close of the reign 
of Charles II. seized the charters of the Whig Corporal ions. 
Now there was another precedent, which I wonder that he did not 
recollect, both because it was much more nearly in point than that 
to which he referred, and because my noble friend, the Paymaster 
of the Forces, had previously alluded to it. If the elective 
franchise is property — if to disfranchise voters without a crime 
proved, or a compensation given, be robbery — was there ever such 
an act of robbery as the disfranchising of the Irish forty-shilling 
freeholders ? Was any pecuniary compensation given to them ? 
Is it declared in the preamble of the bill which took away their 
votes, that they had been convicted of any offence ? Was any 
judicial inquiry instituted into their conduct? Were they even 
accused of any crime ? Or say, that it was a crime in the electors 
of Clare to vote for the hon. and learned Gentleman who now 
represents the county of Waterford — was a Protestant forty- 
shilling freeholder in Louth, to be punished for the crime of a 
Catholic forty -shilling freeholder in Clare ? If the principle of the 
hon. and learned member for Newport be sound, the franchise of 
the Irish peasant was property. That franchise, the Ministry under 
which the hon. and learned Member held office, did not scruple to 
take away. Will he accuse the late Ministers of robbery ? If not, 
how can he brina: such an accusation ao-ainst their successors' 
Every Gentleman, I think, who has spoken from the other side of 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 89 

the House, has alluded to the opinions which some of his Majesty's 
Ministers formerly entertained on the subject of Reform. It would 
be officious in me, Sir, to undertake the defence of Gentlemen who 
are so well able to defend themselves. I will only say, that, in my 
opinion, the country will not think worse either of their talents or 
of their patriotism, because they have shown that they can profit 
by experience, because they have learned to see the folly of delay- 
ing inevitable changes. There are others who ought to have 
learned the same lesson. I say, Sir, that there are those who, I 
should have thought, must have had enough to last them all their 
lives of that humiliation which follows obstinate and boastful 
resistance to measures rendered necessary by the progress of 
society, and by the development of the human mind. Is it possible 
that those persons can wish again to occupy a position, which can 
neither be defended, nor surendered with honour ? I well remem- 
ber, Sir, a certain evening in the month of May, 1827. I had not 
•then the honour of a seat in this House ; but I was an attentive 
observer of its proceedings. The right hon. Baronet opposite, 
(Sir R. Peel) of whom personally I desire to speak with that high 
respect which I feel for his talents and his character, but of whose 
public conduct I must speak with the sincerity required by my 
public duty, was then, as he is now, out of office. He had just 
resigned the Seals of the Home Department, because he conceived 
that the Administration of Mr. Canning was favourable to the 
Catholic claims. He rose to ask whether it was the intention of 
the new Cabinet to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, and to 
Reform the Parliament. He bound up, I well remember, those 
two questions together ; and he declared, that if the Ministers 
should either attempt to repel the Test and Corporation Acts, or 
bring forward a measure of Parliamentary Reform, he should 
think it his duty to oppose them to the utmost. Since that 
declaration was made nearly four years have elapsed ; and what is 
now the state of the three questions which then chiefly agitated 



90 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

the minds of men ? What is become of the Test and Corporation 
Acts ? They are repealed. By whom ? By the late Administra- 
tion. What has become of the Catholic disabilities ? They arc 
removed. By whom ? By the late Administration. The question 
of Parliamentary Reform is still behind. But signs, of which it is 
impossible to misconceive the import, do most clearly indicate, 
that, unless that question also be speedily settled, property and 
order, and all the institutions of this great monarchy, will be 
exposed to fearful peril. Is it possible, that Gentlemen long versed 
in high political affairs cannot read these signs ? Is it possible 
that they can really believe that the Representative system of 
England, such as it now is, will last till the year 1860 ? If n< t, 
for what would they have us wait? W r ould they have us wait 
merely that we may show to all the world how little we have 
profited by our own recent experience ? Would they have us 
wait, that we may once again hit the exact point where we can 
neither refuse with authority, nor concede with grace? Would 
they have us wait, that the numbers of the discontented party may 
become larger, its demands higher, its feelings more acrimonious, 
its organization more complete? Would they have us wait till 
the whole tragi-comedy of 1827 has been acted over again; till 
thev have been brought into office bv a cry of " No Reform ! to 
be reformers, as they were once before brought into office by a cry 
of " No Popery !" to be emancipators ? Have they obliterated 
from their minds — gladly perhaps would some among them 
obliterate from their minds — the transactions of that year? And 
have they forgotten all the transactions of the succeeding year ? 
Have they forgotten how the spirit of liberty in Ireland, debarred 
from its natural outlet, found a vent by forbidden passages ? Have 
they forgotten how we were forced to indulge the Catholics in all 
the license of rebels, merely because we chose to withhold from 
them the liberties of subjects ? Do they wait for associations 
more formidable than that of the Corn Exchange, — lor coptribii- 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 91 

tions larger than the Rent,- — for agitators more violent thai) those 
who, three years ago, divided with the King and the Parliament, 
the sovereignty of Ireland ? Do they wait for that last and most 
dreadful paroxysm of popular rage, — for that last and most cruel 
test of military fidelity ? Let them wait, if their past experience 
shall induce them to think that any high honour or any exquisite 
pleasure is to be obtained by a policy like this. Let them wait 
if this strange and fearful infatuation be indeed upon them, — tha 
they should not see with their eyes, or hear with their ears, 01 
understand with their heart. But let us know our interest ana 
our duty better. Turn where we may, — within, — around, — the 
voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may 
preserve. Now, therefore, while every thing at home and abroad 
forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against 
the spirit of the age, — now, while the crash of the proudest throne 
of the continent is still resounding in our ears, — now, while the 
roof of a British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled 
heir of forty kings, — now, while we see on every side ancient 
institutions subverted, and great societies dissolved, — now, while 
the heart of England is still sound, — now, while the old feelings 
and the old associations retain a power and a charm which may 
too soon pass away, — now, in this your accepted time, — now, in 
this your day of salvation, — take counsel, not of prejudice, — not 
of party spirit, — not of the ignominious pride of a fatal con- 
sistency,- -but of history, — of reason, — of the ages which are 
past, — of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a 
manner worthy of the expectation with which this great Debate 
has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will 
leave behind. Renew the youth of the State. Save property 
divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by their 
own ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by 
its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, and fairest, and 
most highly civilized community that ever existed, from calamities 



§$ fcAkttAMENTARY REFORM. 

which ma} in a few days sweep away ail the rich heritage of SC 
many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The 
time is short. If this Bill should be rejected, I pray to God that 
none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their 
votes with unavailing regret, amidst the wreck of laws, the 
confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution 
of social order. 



03 



ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.* 

July g, 1831. 

On the Adjourned Debate on the Second Reading of Lord John 
RusselVs Parliamentary Reform Bill for Ireland. 

Before I proceed to examine what may be termed the political 
arguments applicable to the question, I wish to notice one position, 
which, if it were a sound one, I admit would be decisive against 
Reform. That position is — that the elective franchise is property 
— as much property as the dividends of the fundholder, or the rents 
of the landowner. It must either be property or not property ; 
and if it be property, to seize what belongs to the rich man, in 
order to give it to the poor man, would be to break up the very 
foundation of social order. I support this measure because L am 
convinced that the elective franchise is not property, and that the 
Bill ought not, therefore, to give compensation. Looking back to 
the earliest times, we shall find, that if the elective franchise be 
property, the present system is founded upon the most monstrous 
system of injustice and robbery. The great disfranchisement of 
the reign of Henry VI., was an act of unheard-of plunder, and the 
same remark will apply to the Reform introduced by Oliver Crom- 
well. I will not argue on the merit or demerit of his system, but 
this I will say, that the best and wisest men of that, and subsequent 
times, never treated the elective franchise as property. I spe?ik of 
all the debates in which Maynard and Hale partook under tlm 
vigorous Oliver, and his feeble successor. Sir Henry Vane said, 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. iv. 1831, p. 773-783. 



94 t»A-hltAM£#fiftY ftfiJ'OftM. 

that it was a Reform which the Long Parliament would have macU 
had it lasted ; and Lord Clarendon declared, that it was a Reform 
which the King ought to have made had he then come to tha 
Crown. Lord Clarendon, the most distinguished of royalists, who 
leaned too much to legal refinements on political questions, 
describes it as a Reform which was fit to be made bv a more war- 
rantable method, and in better times. This, then, I say, is that 
more warrantable method; this that better time. What Cromwell 
attempted in a country lately convulsed by civil war, and still 
agitated by religious factions, we are now called upon to accom- 
plish in a state of perfect peace, and under a Prince whose title is 
as undisputed, as his person is beloved. The only circumstances 
which, in the opinion of Lord Clarendon, were wanting in the 
Reform of Cromwell, we find in the Reform of William the Fourth. 
If the elective franchise were property, these, I contend, were most 
extensive and sweeping confiscations ; but, for the sake of the great 
institution of property, for which all other institutions exist, which 
is the source of all knowledge and of all industry, I do most 
deeply lament to hear the sanctity that belongs to property claimed 
by that which is not property. If you mix political abuses with 
the institution of property, you must expect, that property will 
contract the odium of political abuses ; and people will imagine 
that there is no more immorality in taking away a man's estate, 
than in disfranchising Old Sarum. If you bind them up that they 
may stand together, take care that they do not fall together. 
Many have before used the argument which we heard repeated last 
night, and which, if I mistake not, was originally employed by the 
right hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel). It is true, say they, that the Act 
of 1829 was a confiscation of the property of the 406*. freeholders 
of Ireland, and show us a case of necessity equally urgent, and we 
will vote for Reform. Let them, however, beware how they set a 
precedent for the invasion of property on the ground of political 
convenience. Considering the elective franchise as not property, 



PARLIAMENTARY KK?OUM. 

we have only to discuss and decide this question — whether it v. 
expedient at the present moment to touch it. The only argument 
I have heard on this subject was that used by a noble Lord (Por 
chester) who spoke for the first time last night, and whom it gave 
me great pleasure to hear. The noble Lord referred to the history 
of France, and particularly to recent events in that country ; but I 
must question the noble Lord's arguments, as well as his facts. 1 
must deny, that there was a fluctuation from a desire for a, violent 
change from monarchical to a republican form of government, or 
that it was the fluctuation of the same party. Different opinions 
did, no doubt, prevail under different administrations — under de 
Gazes, Villele, and other administrations ; but then these different 
opinions were expressed by Chambers differently constituted. The 
Chamber of Deputies of 181 5 was differently constituted from that 
of 1819, and that of 1824 differed from both. The Chamber of 
1827, indeed, though chosen in the same manner as the Chamber 
of 1824, took a very different course. But this difference of politi- 
cal feeling in the Representative body, chosen under different cir- 
cumstances, was an everynlay case. When Queen Anne dis- 
charged her Whig Ministrv, she succeeded also in getting a House 
of Commons, the majority of which were Tories. On the acces- 
sion' of George 1st, another change took place, and a House of 
Commons, chiefly Whigs, were returned. In the same way a total 
change took place in the political character of the Commons in the 
election of 1784. I pretest against the analogy drawn by the 
noble Lord, and I deny that the cases of England and France are 
alike. I deny, that we have had any parties here even remotely 
resembling the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary parties of 
France. I deny that there is any analogy between the two Houses 
of Peers. I regard the Chamber of Peers of France as an unfor- 
tunate experiment — as a kind of forced production — an exotic : 
there was nothing in the property or in the state of society in 
France, which required such an institution ; it had no root in the 



90 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

soil, and its decline and fall need not give the aristocracy of Eng- 
land the slightest alarm. The principal, and most plausible argu- 
ment against the Reform Bill is this — mark how rich, how great, 
how happy, this country is, and has been ; the admired of all men, 
and the envied of foreign nations ; will you, then, change a system 
which has produced so many, and such lasting benefits ? lam 
far from denying that Englaud is a great and prosperous country. 
1 am as far from denying, that she owes much of her greatness and 
prosperity to the form of her government ; but government and 
society are cause and effect — they re-act on each other. No doubt 
the government of the Czar Peter did much for Russia ; but would 
it be an argument against giving her free institutions, that despot- 
ism had procured her civilization ? The whole of history shews, 
that ail great revolutions, have been produced by a disproportion 
between society and its institutions ; for while society has grown, 
its institutions have not kept pace and accommodated themselves 
to its improvements. When we are told of the admiration of dis- 
tinguished foreigners of all ages for the Constitution of England, it 
seems to be thought, that their applause has been bestowed upon 
the same institutions which, in the lapse of centuries, have under- 
gone no change. Philip de Comines said, that the English were 
the best-governed people in the world, and when Montesquieu 'gave 
them the same praise, were both writers speaking of the same insti- 
tutions ? Certainly not. The history of England is the history of 
a succession of Reforms ; and the very reason that the people of 
England are great and happy is, that their history is the history of 
Reform. The great Charter, the first assembling of Parliament, 
the Petition of Right, the Revolution, and lastly, this great mea- 
sure — are all proofs of my position — are all progressive stages in 
the progress of society — and I am fully convinced that every argu- 
ment urged against the step we are now called upon to take might 
have been advanced with equal justice against any of the other 
changes I have enumerated. It is the principle of " Hume T s JJip* 



1'AIIUAMENTAKY KEFOKM. 97 

tory," as every body knows, that the Stuarts governed better than 
the Tudors ; but, suppose any man had risen in the Convention 
Parliament, and said, " how great and happy we are— we have ten 
times as many inhabitants, and merchants ten times as wealthy as 
under the Tudors ; we have been most admirably governed — we 
are not slaves under the Dey of Tripoli, but free subjects of a gene- 
rous Monarch, and why should we change V The answer is plain. 
If we had been the slaves of the Dey of Tripoli, we should not 
have known better, but the change in our situations lias educated 
us for improvements in our institutions. At the present moment 
we everywhere see society outgrowing our institutions. Wher- 
ever we turn our eyes, we behold a nation great and civilized — 
with a soil cultivated to a degree of fertility unknown to other 
countries — with the perfection of all discoveries in physical science, 
to promote the conveniences of life — standing pre-eminent among 
the civilized world in everything that depends upon the skill and 
intelligence of individuals, or combinations of individuals — and yet, 
with laws and institutions that little command the respect and 
admiration of mankind. Our roads, our bridges, our steam- 
engines, our manufactures, our modes of conveyance, our demand 
for labor, and our rewards of ingenuity, surpass those of any nation 
in the ancient or modern world, and extort the admiration of rival 
States ; but, let me ask, are foreigners equally struck with the 
excellence of our legislative enactments — with the modes of con 
veying land, or of conducting actions — and with a Penal Code that 
seems purposely contrived to puzzle and ensnare? These are mat- 
ters in which the Legislature has shown its skill, as our manufac- 
turers have shown theirs, but with a far different result. Let ua 
contrast our commerce, wealth, and perfect civilization, with our 
Penal Laws — at once barbarous and inefficient — the preposterous 
fictions of pleading — the mummery of fines and recoveries — the 
chaos of precedents, and the bottomless pit of Chancery. Here we 
see the barbarism of the thirteenth century coupled with the cjvi- 
VOL, I. « 



98 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

lization of the nineteenth, and we see too, that the barbarism 
belongs to the Government, and the civilization to the people, 
Then I say, that this incongruous state of things cannot continue ; 
and if we do not terminate it with wisdom, ere long we shall find 
it ended by violence. Because I think we have arrived at the 
point, when a change is both wise and necessary, I support this 
Bill with heart and soul ; and I shall be proud to the last hour of 
my life, of the part I have been able to take in this great act ctf 
reconciliation between the state of society and the condition of its 
institutions. We were told in the last Parliament, that this is not 
the Reform for which the people petitioned ; and if it be not, look- 
ing at the manner in which it has been received, nothing can prove 
more decisively the blessed effect of seasonable concession. Never 
was there so signal an example of that wise policy which conducts 
the great revolutions of public opinion to a happy and peaceful 
conclusion, and renders the very act of extending liberty the secu- 
rity for social order. It is not strange, that the people, denied their 
reasonable claims, should become unreasonable ; and, when 
repulsed by those who ought to hear them, should fly to dema- 
gogues. We have seen how excitement was created, and we have 
seen, too, how it may be allayed. The true secret of the power of 
agitators is, the obstinacy of rulers ; and liberal governments make 
a moderate people. Did we not hear in the beginning of the last 
Session the Prime Minister declare, that there should be no Reform, 
and what was the consequence ? The people were excited to such 
a state, that it seemed as if a dissolution of social order was at 
hand. So near at hand was it thought, that the Minister of the 
Crown did not dare to show his Sovereign in his capital. I will 
venture to say, that now there is not a nation in the world more 
sincerely or more justly attached to the person and government of 
their King than the English, or more disposed to strengthen the 
hands of the public authorities in the enforcement of the law. I 
4o not, however, wonder that a measure which removes discontent 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 99 

should excite the hatred of two classes — the friends of corruption, 
and the agents of sedition. All who love abuses because they pro- 
fit by them, and all who take advantage of disaffection which 
abuses occasion, are naturally leagued against a Bill, which, by 
making the Government pure, renders the people attached. Thos6 
who stand at the two extremities of political opinions play into 
each other's hands on an occasion like the present; the friends of 
despotism, on the one hand, are furnished by Jacobin agitators 
with pretexts for oppression ; and Jacobin agitators, on the other 
hand, are provided by the friends of despotism with arguments 
against Government. I am rejoiced to see, that the people of Eng- 
land know how to appreciate the monstrous coalition between the 
enemies of all order and the opponents of all liberty. England 
has spoken, and spoken out, from every part of the kingdom where 
the voice of the people was allowed to be heard ; it has been heard 
from our mightiest sea-ports — from our manufacturing towns — 
from the capital — from our populous counties. As far as my cal- 
culations have gone on the late returns, from almost all those 
situations a suitable answer lias been returned to that truly royal 
voice which demands the opinion of the nation. Here we are now, 
nearly all Reformers — all Reformers in some sense or other — in 
some degree or other — for not one Member has declared himself 
opposed to the principle of Reform ; at least some hint has been 
thrown out that he is not adverse to all change — and I most 
thoroughly and cordially agree with the noble Paymaster of 
the Forces, that, like the Scotch army at Dunbar, the enemies 
of Reform have placed themselves at the mercy of their adver- 
saries. Their arguments and their abuse might be equally 
directed against all Reforms, for all might be asserted to be revo- 
lutionary, anarchical, and demoralizing. It has been said, that 
the Reform Bill introduced for England is not the Reform for 
which the people petitioned. Will that Reform Bill which is to 
be proposed by hon. Gentlemen opposite, be that Reform for which 



100 FARLtAMfiXtAftY ftE^ORM. 

I he people have petitioned ? If this Bill, now brought forward bj 
the ancient friends and advocates of the people, be not the Reform 
Which is consonant with popular feeling, what will it be if brought 
forward by those who have been always opposed to popular feel- 
ing, and who can adduce no reason for presenting it except intimi- 
dation ? The hon. memler for Aldborough, and other hon. Mem- 
bers, have complained of certain anomalies in the Bill. They 
object to the measure, that it gives one county twelve Members, 
while a larger has got only ten — that such a town as Brighton is 
to have only one Member, while another less considerable is to 
have two. This may be an excellent argument against the details 
of the measure ; but it cannot in the slightest degree affect the 
principle. Will they bring forward an Amendment to remove 
these anomalies ? Or do they mean to assert that a new Rule of 
Three sum must be worked upon the occasion of every census ? 
If not, why do they censure the Bill because it contains anomalies ? 
But, after all, it contains fewer anomalies than exist in the present 
system [cries of " No, wo"]. I speak with arithmetical precision. 
In the proposed system there is no disproportion so great — none 
which can make up the difference between Old Sarum and Man- 
chester. Hon. Gentlemen opposite would, in my mind, do better 
to answer arguments than to interrupt speeches. If there be ano- 
malies, it is you, and not we, who are bound to propose the remedy 
— so that — 

" Each fair burgh, numerically free, 
Shall choose its Members by the Rule of Three." 

It is asked by the hon. Gentlemen on the other side, will this 
Reform be final ? In return, I ask you, will your Reform be final ? 
The same, and stronger reasons against a Reform being final, apply 
themselves to any you would make. Last year, when there was a 
question of giving Representatives to the greatest manufacturing 
owns in the world, the same argument was brought forward. It 



PAtatAMEKTARY REFORM. 101 

Was said, it would only be the prelude to greater changes. Such 
a Reform could not be final ; how, then, could you pretend to say, 
that any Reform you propose would be final ? Now, Sir, if I am 
asked my opinion, I do declare that this Reform of ours is final ; 
but that any which fell short of it would not be. When I say 
final, I mean that it will be final for that space of time to which we 
can look forward, and for which alone we can attempt to legislate. 
In the course of one hundred years, we may chance to have docks 
as extensive as those of Liverpool in the Hebrides ; and a manu- 
facturing town as large as Manchester, in the county of Galway. 
The same causes are still in action, which, in many places, have 
converted hamlets into great towns, and barren heaths into corn- 
fields and meadows. For a country so altered and improved in its 
condition, we cannot pretend to legislate ; all that we can do is to 
set those who shall then exist the signal example of the mode and 
spirit in which such a reform as their circumstances require should 
take place. In the only way, therefore, in which a public man 
ought to use the word final, T use it ; and thus I declare this 
Reform Bill will be final. Hut as to the other Bill, if the hon. 
Gentlemen opposite should succeed in any branch of the Legisla- 
ture in throwing out this measure of ours— if they should succeed 
in displacing the present Administration— and if they should suc- 
ceed in obtaining a House of Commons which would support a 
new ministry — I ask them what they would do? bir, there can 
be no difficulty in foreseeing and describing the progress down- 
wards. First, there would be a mock Reform — a Bassetlaw 
Reform, worthy of those who, when a delinquent borough was to 
be punished, refu-ed to transfer the franchise to a populous manu- 
facturing town, but threw it into neighboring hundreds — worthy 
of those who refused to give Representatives to the three greatest 
manufacturing towns in the world — a Reform fraught with all the 
evils of change, and not a single benefit — a Reform depriving the 
Government of the foundation of prescription, without substituting 



1Q2 PAittiAMfitfTAn* natom*. 

the foundation of reason and the public good — a Reform which 
would unsettle establishments, without appeasing discontent— ^a 
Reform by which the people would be at once encouraged and 
exasperated — encouraged by the sense of their own importance, 
and the evident effect of their power, and exasperated because what 
they obtained was not what they had demanded. Then would 
come agitation — libels would abound— the Press would be excited 
— and demagogues would harangue in every street. Coercion 
would only aggravate the evil. This is no age, this is no country 
for the war of power against the war of opinions. Those enemies 
to the public quiet — agitators and demagogues, who would -be 
driven back by this Reform Bill to their proper insignificance- 
would become truly powerful, till, at the last, the law would be 
evaded and opposed till it became a mockery, and England would 
be reduced to the same condition in which Ireland was placed at 
the end of the year 1828. Then amidst the cheers of the Whigs, 
who would be occupying their old places on that side of the House, 
and the grief and dismay of the Tories, who are now again trust- 
ing, to be again betrayed, some right hon. Gentleman would rise 
from these benches — as did, on the 1st of March, the Paymaster 
of the Forces, to propose that Bill on which the hearts of the 
people are fixed. Then should we flatter ourselves that all had 
been done ; but not so. The gratitude and delight with which the 
measure would be now received, could no longer exist when the 
materials of agitation were ready. They would find themselves in 
the condition of those in the old stories, who evoked the fiends. 
When once the evil spirit is called up, you must find him work, or 
he will tear you in pieces. The noble Lord opposite spoke of the 
Day of Sacrifices. Let him remember it was afterwards named the 
Day of Dupes, not because it was a Day of Sacrifices, but of sacri- 
fices delayed too iong. It was because the French aristocracy 
refused Reform in 1783, that there was Revolution in 1789. But 
we need not go far to see the danger of delaying inevitable conces- 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 103 

sions. Let us look to Ireland. Is not one such instance, when 
made practically, enough to convince one generation ? I feel, that 
some apology is due for the tone I have assumed ; I fear, that it 
may be deemed unbecoming in me to make any application to the 
fears of Members of this House. But surely I may, without 
reproach, address myself to their honest fears. It is well to talk 
of opposing a firm front to sedition, and of using vigorous means 
to out down agitation. Those phrases are used very properly, 
when they refer to some temporary excitement — to some partial 
disturbances, as in 1*780 — to stifle which, the show of force and 
determination on the part of a Government is alone needed — then 
it is well to show a bold front; but woe to the Government that 
cannot distinguish between a nation and a mob — woe to the 
Government that thinks a great and stead) 7 movement of mind is 
to be put down like a riot. This error has been twice fatal to the 
Bourbons — it may be fatal to the Legislature of this country if they 
should venture to foster it. I do believe, that the irrevocable 
moment has arrived. Nothing can prevent the passing of this 
noble la.v — this second Bill of Rights. I do call it the second Bill 
of Rights ; and so will the country call it ; and so will our children. 
I call it a greater Charter of the liberties of England. Eighteen 
hundred and thirty-one is destined to exhibit the first example of 
an established, of a deep-rooted system removed without blood- 
shed, or violence, or rapine — all points being debated — every punc- 
tilio observed — the peaceful industry of the country never for a 
moment checked or compromised — and the authority of the law 
not for one instant suspended. These are things of which we may 
well be proud. These are things which make us look with confi- 
dence and good hope to the future destinies of the human race. 
These are things that enable us to look forward to a long series of 
tranquil and happy years, in which we shall have a popular 
(rovernment ana a loyal people; and in which war, if war be 
inevitable, shall find us a united nation — of years pre-eminentlv 



104 PARLIAMENTARY* REFORM. 

distin guished by the progress of art and science, and of know- 
ledge generally ; by the diminution of the public burthens, and by 
all those victories of peace in which, more than in the most splen- 
did military successes, consist the true prosperity of States and the 
glory of Statesmen. Sir, it is with these feelings, and with these 
hopes, that I give my most cordial assent to the measure, consider- 
ing it desirable in itself, and a*, the present moment, and in the 
present temper of the people, indispensably necessary to the repose 
of the empire and the stability of the Throne. 



105 



ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM * 

September 20, 1831. 

On the third reading of the Reform Bill for England. 

It is not without great diffidence, Sir, that I rise to address you 
on a subject which has been nearly exhausted. Indeed, I should not 
have risen had I not thought that though the arguments on this 
question are for the most part old, our situation at present is in 
a great measure new. At length the Reform Bill, having passed 
without vital injury through all the dangers which threatened it 
during a long and minute discussion, from the attacks of its ene- 
mies and from the dissensions of its friends, comes before us for our 
mini ratification, altered, indeed, in some of its details for the 
better, and in some for the worse, but in its great principles still 
the same Bill which, on the 1st of March, was proposed to the late 
Parliament — the same Bill which was received with joy and Grati- 
tude by the whole nation — the same Bill which, in an instant, took 
away the power of interested agitators, and united in one firm 
body sects of sincere Reformers — the same Bill which, at the late 
election, received the approbation of almost every great constituent 
body in the empire. With a confidence which discussion has onlv 
strengthened — with an assured hope of great public blessings if 
the wish of the nation shall be gratified — with a deep and solemn 
apprehension of great public calamities if that wish shall be disap- 
pointed — I for the last time give my most hearty assent to this 
noble law, destined, I trust, to be the parent of many good laws, 



• Hansard, 3d Series, vol. vii. 1831, p. 297-311. 
6* 



166 i>AftLiAMENTARY kfeFORM. 

and, through a long series of years, to secure the repose aiK 1 
promote the prosperity of my country. When I say that I expect 
this Bill to promote the prosperity of the country, I by no means 
intend to encourage those chimerical hopes which the hon. and 
learned member for Rye, who has so much distinguished himself 
in this debate, has imputed to the Reformers. The people, he 
says, are for the Bill, because they expect that it will immediately 
relieve all their distresses. Sir, I believe that verv few of that 
large and respectable class which we are now about to admit to a 
share of political power, entertain any such absurd expectation. 
They expect relief, I doubt not, and I doubt not also that they 
will find it. But sudden relief they are far too wise to expect. 
The Bill, says the hon. and learned Gentleman, is good for nothing 
— it is merely theoretical — it removes no real and sensible evil- 
it will not give the people more work, or higher wages, or cheaper 
bread. Undoubtedly, Sir, the Bill will not immediately give all 
those things to the people. But will any institutions give them all 
those things ? Do the present institutions of the country secure to 
them these advantages ? If we are to pronounce the Reform Bill 
good for nothing, because it will not at once raise the nation from 
distress to prosperity, what are we to say of that system under 
which the nation has been of late sinking from prosperity intc 
distress ? The defect is not in the Reform Bill, but in the verv 
nature of government. On the physical condition of the great 
body of the people, government acts not as a specific, but as an 
alterative. Its operation is powerful, indeed, and certain, but 
gradual and indirect. H^he end of government is not directly to 
make the peop'e rich, but to protect them in making themselves 
rich — and a Government which attempts more than tin's is 
precisely the Government which is likely to perform less. J Govern- 
ments do not and cannot support the people. We have no mira- 
culous powers — we have not the rod of the Hebrew lawgiver — we 
cannot rain down bread on the multitude from Heaven — we 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 10*7 

cannot smite the rock and give them to drink. We can gire 
them only freedom to employ their industry to the best advantage, 
and security in the enjoyment of what their industry has acquired. 
These advantages it is our duty to give at the smallest possible 
cost.^ The diligence and forethought of individuals will thus have 
fair play ; and it is only by the diligence and forethought of indi- 
viduals that the community can become prosperous. I am not 
aware that his Majesty's Ministers, or any of the supporters o.. 
the Bill, have encouraged the people to hope, that Reform will 
remove their distresses, in any other way than by this indirect 
process. By this indirect process the Bill will, I feel assured, con- 
duce to the national prosperity. If it had been passed fifteen years 
ago, it would have saved us from our present embarrassments. If 
we pass it now, it will gradually extricate us from them. It will 
secure to us a House of Commons, which, by preserving peace, by 
destroying monopolies, by taking away unnecessary public 
burthens, by judiciously distributing necessary public burthens, 
will, in the progress of time, greatly improve our condition. This 
it will do ; and those who blame it for not doing more, blame it for 
not doing what no Constitution, no code of laws, ever did or ever 
will do; what no legislator, who was not an ignorant and unprin- 
cipled quack, ever ventured to promise. But chimerical as are the 
hopes which the hon. and learned member for Ilye imputes to the 
people, they are not, I think, more chimerical than the fears which 
he has himself avowed. Indeed, those very Gentlemen who are 
constantly telling us that we are taking a leap in the dark — that 
we pay no attention to the lessons of experience — that we are mere 
theorists — are themselves the despisers of experience — are them- 
selves the mere theorists. They are terrified at the thought of 
admitting into Parliament Members elected by £10 householders. 
They have formed in their own imaginations a most frightful idea 
of these Members. My hon. and learned friend, the member for 
Cockermouth, is certain that these Menibers will take every oppor 



103 FAR IAMEXTARV l.EFORM. 

tunity of promoting the interests of the journeyman in opposition 
to those of the capitalist. The hon. and learned member for Rye 
is convinced that none but persons who have strong local con- 
nexions, will ever be returned for such constituent bodies. My 
hon. friend, the member for Thetford, tells us, that none but mob- 
orators, men who are willing to pay the basest court to the multi- 
tude, will have any chance. Other speakers have gone still 
further, and have described to us the future borough Members ag 
so many Marats and Santerres — low, fierce, desperate men — who 
will turn the House into a bear-garden, and who will try to turn 
the monarchy into a republic — mere agitators, without honour, 
without sense, without education, without the feelings or the 
manners of gentlemen. Whenever, during the course of the 
fatiguing discussions by which we have been so long occupied, 
there has been a cry of " question," or a noise at the bar, the 
orator who has been interrupted has remarked, that such proceed- 
ings will be quite in place in the Reformed Parliament, but that 
we oiiffht to remember that the House of Commons is still an 
assembly of Gentlemen. This, I say, is to set up mere theory, or 
rather m^re prejudice, in opposition to long and ample experience. 
Are the Gentlemen who talk thus, ignorant that we have already 
the means of judging what kind of men the £10 householders 
will send up to Parliament? Are they ignorant that there are 
even now large towns with very popular rights of election — with 
rights of election even more democratic than those which will be 
bestowed by the present Bill? Ought they not, on their own 
principles, to look at the results of the experiments which have 
already been made, instead of predicting frightful calamities at 
random ? How do the facts which are before us agree with their 
theories? Nottingham is a city with a franchise even more demo- 
cratic than that which this Bill establishes. Does Nottingham 
send hither men of local connexions ? It returns two distinguished 
V&9U — t^e one m advocate, i^e q\\\%i & syidlai'— both UQConuecte4 



PAHUAMENTAKV UEFORM. 109 

with the town. Every man paving scot-and-lot has a vote at 
Leicester. This is a lower franchise than the £10 franchise. Do 
we find that the members for Leicester are the mere tools of the 
journeymen? I was at Leicester during the contest in 182G, and 
I recollect that the suffrages of the scot-and-lot voters were pretty 
equally divided between two candidates — neither of them connect- 
ed with the place — neither of them a slave of the mob — the one 
a Tory Baronet from Derbyshire — the other a most respectable 
and excellent friend of mine, connected with the manufacturing 
interest, and also an inhabitant of Derbyshire. Look at Norwich 
— Look at Northampton, with a franchise more democratic than 
even the scot-and-lot franchise. Northampton formerly returned 
Mr. Perceval, and now returns Gentlemen of high respectability — 
Gentlemen who have a great stake in the prosperity and tranquillity 
of the country. Look at the metropolitan districts. This is an a 
fortiori case. Nay it is — the expression, I fear, is awkward — an a 
fortiori case at two removes. The £10 householders of the 
metropolis are persons in a lower station of life than the £10 
householders of other towns. The scot-and-lot franchise in the 
metropolis is again lower than the £10 franchise — yet have West- 
minster and Southwark been in the habit of sending us Members 
of whom we have had reason to be ashamed — of whom we have 
not had reason to be proud ? I do not say that the inhabitants of 
Westminster and Southwark have always expressed their political 
sentiments with proper moderation. That is not the question — 
the question is this — what kind of men have they elected ? The 
very principle of all Representative government is, that men who 
do not judge rightly of public affairs may be quite competent to 
choose others who will judge better. Whom, then, have West- 
minster and Southwark sent us during the last fifty years — j mis 
full of great events — years of intense popular excitement ? Take 
any one of those nomination-boroughs, the patrons of which have 
conscientiously endeavoured to send fit men into this }lous§. 



HO PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

Compare the Members for that borough with the members foi 
Westminster and Southwark, and you will have no doubt to which 
the preference is due, It is needless to mention Mr. Fox, Mr. 
Sheridan, Mr. Tierney, Sir Samuel Romilly. Yet I must pause at 
the name of Sir Samuel Romilly. Was he a mob-orator ? Wa? 
he a servile flatterer of the multitude ? Sir, if he had any fault — 
if there was any blemish on that most serene and spotless charac- 
ter — that character which every public man, and especially every 
professional man engaged in politics, ought to propose to himself 
as a model — it was this, that he despised popularity too much and 
too visibly. The hon. Member for Thetford told us that the hon. 
and learned member for Rye, with all his talents, would have no 
chance of a seat in the Reformed Parliament, for want of the quali- 
fications which succeed on the hustings. Did Sir Samuel Romilly 
ever appear on the hustings? He never solicited one vote — he 
never shewed himself to the electors till he had been returned at 
the head of the poll. Even then — as I have heard from one of 
his nearest relatives — it was with reluctance that he submitted to 
be chaired. He shrank from being made a shew. lie loved the 
people, and he served them ; but Coriolanus himself was not less 
fit to canvass them. I will mention one other name — that of a 
man of whom I have only a childish recollection, but who must 
have been intimately known to many of those who hear me — Mr. 
Henry Thornton. He was a man eminently upright, honourable, 
and religious — a man of strong understanding — a man of great 
political science — but, in ail respects, the very reverse of a mob- 
orator. He was a man who would not have yielded to what he 
considered as unreasonable clamour — I will not say to save his 
8ea t — but to save his life. Yet he continued to represent South- 
wark, Parliament after Parliament, for many years. Such has 
been the conduct of the scot-ancl-lot voters of the metropolis, and 
there is clearly less reason to expect democratic violence from £10 
householders than from, scot-and-lot householders ; and from £10 



PARLIAMENTARY KEFORM. HI 

householders in the country-towns than from £10 householders in 
London. The experience, T say, therefore, is on our side; and on 
the side of our opponents nothing but mere conjecture, and mere 
Assertion. Sir, when tins Kill was first brought forward, I sup- 
ported it not only on the ground of its intrinsic merits, but, also, 
because I was convinced that to reject it would be a course full of 
danger. I believe that the danger of that course is in no respect 
diminished. I believe, oh the contrary, that it is increased. We 
are told that there is a reaction. The warmth of the public feeling, 
it seems, has abated. In this story botli the sections of the party 
opposed to Reform are agreed — those who hate Reform, because 
it will remove abuses, and those who hate it, because it will avert 
anarchy — those who wish to see the electing body controlled by 
ejectments, and those who wish to see it controlled by constitu- 
tional squeezes. They must now, I think, be undeceived. They 
must have already discovered that the surest way to prevent a 
reaction is, to talk about it, and that the enthusiasm of the people 
is at once rekindled by any indiscreet mention of their seemino- 
coolness. This, Sir, is not the first reaction which the sagacity of 
the Opposition has discovered since the Reform Bill was brought 
in. Every Gentleman who sat in the late Parliament — every 
Gentleman who, during the sitting of the late Parliament, paid 
attention to political speeches and publications, must remember 
how, for some time before the debate on General Gascoyne's 
motion, and during the debate on that motion, and down to the 
very day of the dissolution, we were told that public feeling had 
cooled. The right hon. Baronet, the member for Tarn worth, told 
us so. All the literary organs of the Opposition, from the 
Quarterly Review down to the Morning Post, told us so. All the 
members of the Opposition with whom we conversed in private 
told us so. I have in my eye a noble friend of mine, who assured 
me, on the very night which preceded the dissolution, that ths 
people had ceased to be zealous for th> Ministerial plan, and that 



\\'2 PAftLlAMEXtARY RfifcltlM. 

we were more likely to lose than to gain by the elections. The 
appeal was made to the people; and what was the result? What 
sign of a reaction appeared among the Livery of London ? What 
sign of a reaction did the hon. Baronet who now represents Oke- 
hampton find among the free-holders of Cornwall ? How was it 
with the large represented towns ? Had Liverpool cooled ? — ot 
Bristol ? or Leicester ? or Coventry ? or Nottingham ? or Norwich 
How was it with the great seats of manufacturing industry — York 
shire, and Lancashire, and Staffordshire, aud Warwickshire, anc 
Cheshire? How was it with the agricultural districts — Northum- 
berland and Cumberland, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, Kent 
and Essex, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, 
Devonshire? How was it with* the strong-holds of aristociatical 
influence, Newark, and Stamford, and Hertford, and St. Alban's ? 
Never did any people display, within the limits prescribed by law, 
so generous a fervour, or so steadfast a determination, as that very 
people whose apparent languor had just before inspired the 
enemies of Reform with a delusive hope. Such was the end of the 
reaction of April; and, if that lesson shall not profit those to whom 
it was given, such and yet more signal will be the end of the 
reaction of September. The two cases are strictly analogous. In 
both cases the people were eager when they believed the Bill to be 
in danger, and quiet when they believed it to be in security.. 
During the three or four weeks which followed the promulgation 
of the Ministerial plan, all was joy, and gratitude, and vigorous 
exertion. Everywhere meetings were held — everywhere resolu- 
tions were passed — from every quarter were sent up petitions 
to this House, and addresses to the Throne — and then the nation, 
having given vent to its first feelings of delight — having clearly 
and strongly expressed its opinions— having seen the principle of 
the Bill adopted by the House of Commons on the second reading 
— became composed, and awaited the result with a tranquillity 
vhich the Opposition mistook for indifference. All at once the 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 118 

aspect of affairs changed. General Gascoyne's amendment was 
carried — the Bill was again in danger — exertions were again 
necessary. Then was it well seen whether the calmness of the 
public mind was any indication of slackness ! The depth and 
sincerity of the prevailing sentiments were proved, not by mere 
talking, but by actions, by votes, by sacrifices. Intimidation was 
defied — expenses were rejected — old tias were broken — the people 
struggled manfully — they triumphed gloriously — they placed the 
Bill in perfect security, as far as this House was concerned, and 
they returned to their repose. They are now, as they were on the 
eve of General Gascoyne's motion, awaiting the issue of the delibe- 
rations of Parliament, without any indecent shew of violence, but 
with anxious interest and immovable resolution. And because 
they are not exhibiting that noisy and rapturous enthusiasm, 
which is in its own nature transient — because they are not as 
much excited as on the day when the plan of the Govern- 
ment was first made known to them, or on the day when the 
late Parliament was dissolved — because they do not go on week 
after week, hallooing, and holding meetings, and marching 
about with flags, and making bonfires, and illuminating their 
houses — we are again told that there is a reaction. To such a de- 
gree can men be deceived by their wishes, in spite of their own 
recent experience ! Sir, there is no reaction ; and there will be no 
reaction. All that has been said on this subject convinces me 
only that those who are now, for the second time, raising this cry, 
know nothing of the crisis in which they are called on to act, or of 
the nation which they aspire to govern — all their opinions respect- 
ing this Bill are founded on one great error. They imagine that 
the public feeling concerning Reform is a mere whim which sprang 
up suddenly out of nothing, and which will as suddenly vanish 
into nothing. They, therefore, confidently expect a reaction. 
They are always looking out for a reaction. Everything that they 
see, or that they hear, they construe into a sign of the approach of 



114 RARLlAMEtfTARY REFORM. 

this reaction. They resemble the man in Horace, who lies on th* 
bank of the river, expecting that it will every moment pass by and 
leave 1 him a clear passage — not knowing the depth and abundance 
of the fountain which feeds it — not knowing that it flows, and will 
flow on for ever. They have found out a hundred ingenious 
devices by which they deceive themselves. Sometimes they tell us 
that the public feeling about Reform was caused by the events 
which took place at Paris about fourteen months ago ; though 
every observant and impartial man knows, that the excitement 
which the late French revolution produced in England, was riot 
the cause but the effect of that progress which liberal opinions had 
made amongst us. Sometimes they tell us, that we should not 
have been troubled with any complaints on the subject of the 
Representation, if the House of Commons had agreed to a certain 
motion, made in the Session of 1830, for inquiry into the causes of 
the public distress. I remember nothing about that motion, 
except that it gave rise to the dullest debate ever known ; and the 
country, I am firmly convinced, cared not one straw about it. But 
is it not strange that men of real talents can deceive themselves so 
grossly, as to think that any change in the Government of a 
foreign nation, or the rejection of any single motion, however 
popular, could all at once raise up a great, rich, enlightened nation, 
against its representative institutions? Could such small drops 
have produced an overflowing, if the vessel had not already been 
filled to the very brim ? These explanations are incredible, and if 
they were credible, would be anything but consolatory. If it 
were really true that the English people had taken a sudden aver- 
sion to a representative system which they had always loved and 
admired, because a single division in Parliament had gone against 
their wishes, or because, in a foreign country, under circumstances 
bearing not the faintest analogy to those in which we are placed, a 
change of dynasty had happened, what hope could we have for 
such a nation of madmen ? How could we expect that the present 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 115 

form of government, or any form of government, would be durably 
amongst them? — Sir, the public feeling concerning Reform is of no 
such recent origin, and springs from no such frivolous causes. Its 
first faint commencement may be traced far— very far — back in 
our history. During seventy years it has had a great influence on 
t lie public mind. Through the first thirty years of the reign ojf 
George III., it was gradually increasing. The great leaders of the 
two parties in the State were favourable to Reform. It was sup 1 
ported by large and most respectable minorities in the House of 
Commons. The French Revolution, filling the higher and middle 
classes with an extreme dread of change, and the war calling away 
the public attention from internal to external politics, threw the 
question back ; but the people never lost sight of it. Peace came, 
and they were at leisure to think of domestic improvements. 
Distress came, and they suspected, as was natural, that their 
distress was the effect of unfaithful stewardship and unskilful legis- 
lation. An opinion favourable to Parliamentary Reform grew up 
rapidly, and became strong among the middle classes. But one 
tie — one strong tie — still bound those classes to the. Tory party, I 
mean the Catholic Question. It is impossible to deny, that on 
that subject a large proportion — a majority, I fear — of the middle 
class of Englishmen, conscientiously held opinions opposed to 
those which I have always entertained, and were disposed to 
orifice every other consideration to what they considered as 
rwligious duty. Thus tlie Catholic Question hid, so to speak, 
uu» question of Parliamentary Reform : the feeling in favour of 
. /ittliamentary Reform grew, but it grew in the shade. Every 
r:*n, 1 think, must have observed the progress of that feeling in 
i }$ own social circle. B'S&i few Reform meetings were held, and 
£jw petitions in favour of Reform presented. At length the 
Catholics were emancipated ; the solitary link of sympathy which 
attached the people to the Tories was broken ; the cry of " Nc 
Popery" could- no longer be opposed to the cry of " Reform."- 



116 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

That which, in the opinion of the two great parties in Parliament, 
and of a vast portion of the community, had been the first 
question, suddenly disappeared ; and the question of Parliamen- 
tary Reform took the first place ; then was put forth all the 
strength which that question had gathered in secret ; then it 
appeared that Reform had on its side a coalition of interests and 
opinions unprecedented in our history — all the liberality and 
intelligence which had supported the Catholic claims, and all the 
clamour which had opposed them. This, I believe, is the true 
history of that public feeling on the subject of Reform, which has 
been ascribed to causes quite inadequate to the production of such 
an effect. If ever there was in the history of mankind a national 
sentiment which was the very opposite of a caprice — with which 
accident had nothing to do — which was produced by the slow, 
steady, certain progress of the human mind, it is the feeling of the 
English people on the subject of Reform. Accidental circumstan- 
ces may have brought that feeling to maturity in a particular year, 
or a particular month. That point I will not dispute, for it is not 
worth disputing ; but those accidental circumstances have brought 
on Reform, only as the circumstance that, at a particular time, 
indulgences were offered to sale in a particular town in Saxony, 
brought on the great separation from the Church of Rome. In 
both cases the public mind was prepared to move on the slightest 
impulse. Thinking thus of the public opinion concerning Reform 
— being convinced that this opinion is the mature product of time 
and of discussion — I expect no reaction. I no more expect to see 
my countrymen again content with the mere semblance of a Repre- 
sentation, than to see them again drowning witches or burning 
heretics — trying causes by red-hot plough-shares, or offering up 
human sacrifices to wicker idols. I no more expect a reaction in 
favour of Gatton and Old Sarum, than a reaction in favour of 
Thor and Odin. I should think such a reaction almost as much a 
Bairacle, as that the shadow should go back upon the dial. Revo- 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. II* 7 

lutions produced by violence are often followed by reaction*; the 
victories of reason once gained, are gained for eternity. In fact, if 
there be in the present aspect of public affairs, any sign peculiarly 
full of evil omen to the opponents of Reform, it is that very calm- 
ness of the public mind on which they found their expectations of 
success. They think that it is the calmness of indifference. It is 
the calmness of confid nt hope ; and in proportion to the con- 
fidence of hope will be the bitterness of disappointment. Disap- 
pointment, indeed, I do not anticipate. That we are certain of 
success in this House is now acknowledged ; and our opponents 
have, in consequence, during the whole of our Session, and parti- 
cularly during the present debate, addressed their arguments and 
exhortations rather to the Lords than to the assembly of which 
they are themselves Members. Their principal argument has 
always been, that the Bill will destroy the peerage. The hon. and 
learned member for Rye has, in plain terms, called on the Barons 
of England to save their order from democratic encroachments, by 
rejecting this measure. All these arguments — all these appeals 
being interpreted, mean this: "Proclaim to your countrymen that 
you have no common interests with them, no common sympathies 
with them ; that you can be powerful only by their weakness, and 
exalted only by their degradation ; that the corruptions which 
disgust them, and the oppression against which their spirit rises 
up, are indispensable to your authority ; that the freedom and 
purity of election are incompatible with the very existence of your 
House. Give them clearly to understand that, your power rests, 
not as they have hitherto imagined, on their rational conviction, 
or their habitual veneration, or your own great property, but on a 
system fertile of political evils, fertile also of low iniquities of which 
ordinary justice takes cognizance. Bind up, in inseparable union, 
the privileges of your estate with the grievances of ours; resolve 
to stand or fall with abuses visibly marked out for destruction ; 
tell the people that they are attacking you iu attacking the 



118 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

three holes in the wall, and that they shall never get rid of the 
three holes in the wall till they have got rid of you — that a 
hereditary peerage, and a representative assembly, can co-exist 
only in name — that, if they will have a House of Peers, they must 
be content with a mock House of Commons." This, I say, is the 
advice, bestowed on the Lords, by those who call themselves the 
friends of aristocracy. That advice so pernicious will not be fol- 
lowed, T am well assured ; yet I cannot but listen to it with 
uneasiness. I cannot but wonder that it should proceed from the 
lips of men who are constantly lecturing us on the duty of consult- 
ing history and experience. Have they ever heard what effects 
counsels like their own, when too faithfully followed, have pro- 
duced ? Have they ever visited that neighbouring country, which 
still presents to the eye, even of a passing stranger, the signs of a 
great dissolution and renovation of society ? Have they ever 
walked by those stately mansions, now sinking into decay, and 
portioned out into lodging-rooms, which line the silent streets of 
the Fauxbourg St. Germain ? Have they ever seen the ruins of 
those castles whose ten-aces and gardens overhang the Loire? 
Have they ever heard that from those magnificent hotels, from 
those ancient castles, an aristocracy as splendid, as brave, as proud, 
as accomplished as ever Europe saw, was driven forth to exile and 
beggary — to implore the charity of hostile Governments and 
hostile creeds — to cut wood in the back settlements of America — 
or to teach French in the school-rooms of London ? And why 
were those haughty nobles destroyed with that utter destruction ? 
Why were they scattered over the face of the earth, their titles 
abolished, their escutcheons defaced, their parks wasted, their 
palaces dismantled, their heritage given to strangers ? Because 
they had no sympathy with the people— -no discernment of the 
signs of their time — because, in the pride and narrowuess of tbeii" 
hearts, they called those whose warnings might have saved them, 
theorists and speculators, because they refused all concession till 



PARttAMfitfTAHY REFORM. 118 

tlie time bad arrived when no concession would avail. I have no 
apprehension that such a fate awaits the nobles of England. I 
draw no parallel between our aristocracy and that of France. 
Those who represent the Lords as a class whose power is incompa- 
tible with the just influence of the middle orders in the State, 
draw the parallel, and not I. They do all in their power to place 
the Lords and Commons of England in that position with respect 
to each other in which the French gentry stood with respect to the 
Tiers Etat. But I am convinced that these advisers will not 
succeed. We see, with pride and delight, among the friends of 
the people, the Talbots, the Cavendishes, the princely house of 
Howard. Foremost among those who have entitled themselves, 
by their exertions in this House, to the lasting gratitude of their 
countrymen, we see the descendants of Marlborough, of Russell, 
and of Derby. I hope, and firmly believe, that the Lords will see 
what their interest and their honour require. I hope, and firmly 
believe, that they will act in such a manner as to entitle them- 
selves to the esteem and affection of the people. But if not, let 
not the enemies of Reform imagine that their reign is straightway 
to recommence, or that they have obtained anything more than a 
short and weary respite. We are bound to respect the constitu- 
tional rights of the Peers ; but we are bound also not to forget our 
own. We, too, have our privileges — we, too, are an estate of the 
realm. A House of Commons, strong; in the love and confidence 
of the people — a House of Commons which has nothing to fear 
from a dissolution, is something in the Government. Some 
persons, I well know, indulge a hope that the rejection of the Bill 
will at once restore the domination of that party which fled from 
power last November, leaving everything abroad and everything 
at home in confusion — leaving the European system, which it had 
built up at a vast cost of blood and treasure, falling to pieces 
in every direction — leaving the dynasties which it had restored, 
hastening into exile —leaving the nations which it had joined 



| f 20 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

together, breaking away from each other — leaving the fund 
holders in dismay — leaving the peasantry in insurrection — leaving 
the most fertile counties lighted up with the fires of incendiaries — - 
leaving the capital in such a state, that a royal procession could 
not safely pass through it. Dark and terrible, beyond any season 
within my remembrance of political affairs, was the day of their 
flight. Far darker and far more terrible will be the day of their 
return ; they will return in opposition to the whole British nation, 
united as it was never before united on any internal question — 
united as firmly as when the Armada was sailing up the channel 
— united as when Bonaparte pitched his camp on the cliffs of 
Boulogne. They will return pledged to defend evils which the 
people are resolved to destroy ; they will return to a situation in 
which they can stand only by crushing and trampling down 
public opinion, and from which, if they fall, they may, in their fall, 
drag down with them the whole frame of society. Against such 
evils, should such evils appear to threaten the country, it will be 
our privilege and our duty to warn our gracious and beloved 
Sovereign. It will be our privilege and our duty to convey the 
wishes of a loyal people to the throne of a patriot king. At such 
a crisis the proper place for the House of Commons is in the front 
of the nation ; and in that place this House will assuredly be 
found. Whatever prejudice or weakness may do elsewhere tc 
ruin the empire, here, I trust, will not be wanting the wisdom, the 
virtue, and the energy that may save it. 



121 



ON THE STATE OF THE NATION.* 

OCTOBER 10, 1831. 

I doubt, Sir, whether any person who had merely heard tut 
speech of the right lion, member for the University of Cambridge, 
would have been able to conjecture what the question is which we. 
are discussing, and what the occasion on which we are assembled. 
For myself I can with perfect sincerity declare, that never in the 
whole course of my life did I feel my mind oppressed by so deep 
and solemn a sense of responsibility as at the present moment. I 
firmly believe that the country is now in danger of calamities 
greater than ever threatened it, from domestic misgovernment or 
from foreign hostility. The danger is no less than this — that there 
may be a complete alienation of the people from their rulers. To 
soothe the public mind, to reconcile the people to the delay — the 
short delay — which must intervene before their wishes can be 
legitimately gratified ; and in the mean time, to avert civil discord, 
and to uphold the authority of law — these are, I conceive, the ob- 
jects of my noble friend, the member for Devonshire — these ought, 
at the present crisis, to be the objects of every honest Englishman. 
They are objects which will assuredly be attained, if we rise to this 
great occasion — if we take our stand in the place which the Con 
stitution has assigned to us — if we employ, with becoming firm 
ness and dignity, the powers which belong to us as trustees of the 
nation, and as advisers of the Throne. Sir, the Resolution of my 
noble friend consists of two parts. He calls upon us to declare oui 
undiminished attachment to the principles of the Reform Bill, and 
also our undiminished confidence in his Majesty's Ministers. I con- 



* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. viii. p. 390-399, 
VOL. I, 6 



122 STATE OF THE NATION. 

sider these two declarations as identical. The Question of Retom 
is, in my opinion, of such paramount importance, that, approving 
the principles of the Ministerial Bill, I must think the Ministers 
who have brought that Bill forward, although I may differ from 
them on some minor points, entitled to the strongest support of 
Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman, the member for the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge, has attempted to divert the course of the 
Debate to questions comparatively unimportant. He has said 
much about the coal-duty, about the candle-duty, about the 
budget of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. On most of 
the points to which he has referred, it would be easy for me, were 
1 so inclined, to defend the Ministers ; and where I could not 
defend them, I should find it easy to recriminate on those who 
preceded them. The right hon. member for the University of 
Cambridge has taunted the Ministers with the defeat which their 
measure respecting the timber trade sustained in the last Parlia- 
ment. I might, perhaps, at a more convenient season, be tempted 
to inquire whether that defeat was more disgraceful to them or to 
their predecessors. I might, perhaps, be tempted to ask the right 
hon. Gentleman, whether, if he had not been treated, while in 
office, with more fairness than he has shown while in opposition, 
it would have been in his power to carry his best measure — the 
Beer Bill ? He has accused the Ministers of bringing forward 
financial measures, and then withdrawing those measures. Did 
not he bring forward, during the Session of 1830, a plan respecting 
the sugar duties? and was not that plan withdrawn? But, Sir 
this is mere trithno-. I will not be seduced from the matter in 
hand by the right hon. Gentleman's example. At the presen* 
moment I can see only one question in the State— the Question of 
Reform ; only two parties — the friends of the Bill and its enemies 
It is not my intention, Sir, again to discuss the merits of the Reform 
Bill. The principle of that Bill received the approbation of tli^ 
|$te House of Commons after ten nights' discussion ; and tfce j5ijl 



StATE 6£ itiE NAtiuft ;|S9 

as it now stands, after a long and most laborious investigation 
passed the present House of Commons by a majority which was 
nearly half as large again as the minority. This was a little more 
than a fortnight ago. Nothing has since occurred to change out 
opinion. The justice of the case is unaltered. The public enthu- 
siasm is undiminished. Old Sarum has grown no larger, Manches- 
ter has grown no smaller. In addressing this House, therefore, 1 
am entitled to assume that the Bill is in itself a good Bill. If so, 
ought we to abandon it merely because the Lords have rejected it? 
We ought to respect the lawful privileges of their House ; but we 
ought also to assert our own. We are constitutionally as inde- 
pendent of their Lordships, as their Lordships are of us ; we have 
precisely as go^d a right to adhere to our opinion as they have to 
dissent from it. In speaking of their decision, I will attempt tc 
follow that example of moderation which was so judiciously set b} 
my noble friend, the member for Devonshire ; I will only say that 1 
do not think them more competent to form a correct judgment on' a 
political question than we are. It is certain that on all the most 
important points on which the two Houses have for a long time past 
differed, the Lords have at length come over to the opinion of the 
Commons. I am therefore entitled to say, that with respect to all 
those points, the Peers themselves being judges, the House of Com- 
mons was in the right and the House of Lords in the wrong. It 
was thus with respect to the Slave-trade — it was thus with respect 
io Catholic Emancipation — it was thus with several other impor- 
tant Questions. I, therefore, cannot think that we ought, on the 
present occasion, to surrender our judgment to those who have 
acknowledged that, on former occasions of the same kind, we have 
judged more correctly than they have. Then again, Sir, I cannot 
forget how the majority and the minority in this House were com- 
posed ; I cannot forget that the majority contained almost all those 
Gentlemen who are returned bv large bodies of electors. It is, I 
believe, no exaggeration to say, that there were single Members of 



124 ifAtfi of- Ttta ka^io*. 

the majority who had more constituents than the whole minority 
put together. I speak advisedly and seriously ; I believe that th« 
number of freeholders of Yorkshire exceeds that of all the electors 
who return the Opposition. I cannot with propriety comment 
here on any reports which may have been circulated concerning 
the majority and minority in the House of Lords. I may, how- 
ever, mention these notoriously historical facts — that during the 
last forty years the powers of the executive Government have been, 
almost without intermission, exercised by a party opposed to 
Reform ; and that a very great number of Peers have been created, 
and all the present Bishops raised to the bench during those years. 
On this Question, therefore, while I feel more than usual respect 
for the judgment of the House of Commons, I feel less than usual 
respect for the judgment of the House of Lords. Our decision is 
the decision of the nation ; the decision of their Lordships can 
scarcely be considered as the decision even of that class from which 
the Peers are generally selected, and of which they may be con- 
sidered as virtual Representatives — the great landed gentlemen of 
England. I think, therefore, that we ought to adhere to our 
opinion concerning the Reform Bill. The next question is this — 
ought we to make a formal declaration that we adhere to our 
opinion ? I think that we ought to make such a declaration ; and 
T am sure that we cannot make it in more temperate or more con- 
stitutional terms than those which my noble friend asks us to 
adopt. I support the Resolution which he has proposed with all 
my heart and soul ; I support it as a friend to Reform ; but I sup- 
port it still more as a friend to law, to property, to social order. 
No observant and unprejudiced man can look forward without 
great alarm to the effects which the recent decision of the Lords 
may possibly produce. I do not predict— I do not expect — open, 
armed insurrection. What I apprehend is this — that the people 
may engage in a silent, but extensive and persevering war against 
the law. What 1 apprehend is, that England may exhibit the 



3-tAtfc op* -rati ttAftOtf. 125 

same spectacle which Ireland exhibited three years ago -agitators 
stronger than the Magistrate, associations stronger than the law, a 
Government powerful enough to be hated, and not powerful enough 
to be feared, a people bent on indemnifying themselves by illegal 
excesses for the want of legal privileges. I fear, that we may before 
long see the tribunals defied, the tax-gatherer resisted, public credit 
shaken, property insecure, the whole frame of society hastening to 
dissolution. It is easy to say — "Be bold — be firm — defy intimi- 
dation — let the law have its course — the law is strong enough to 
put down the seditious." Sir, we have heard this blustering before ; 
and we know in what it ended. It is the blustering of little men 
whose lot has fallen on a great ciisis. Xerxes scourging the winds, 
Canute commanding the waves to recede from his footstool, were 
but types of the folly of those who apply the maxims of the Quar- 
ter Sessions to the great convulsions of society. The law has nc 
eyes ; the law has no hands ; the law is nothing — nothing but a 
piece of paper printed by the King's printer, with the King's arms 
at the top — till public opinion breathes the breath of life into the 
dead letter. We found this in Ireland. The Catholic Association 
bearded the Government. The Government resolved to put down 
the Association. An indictment was brought against my hon. and 
learned friend, the member for Kerry. The Grand Jury threw it 
out. Parliament met. The Lords Commissioners came down with a 
speech recommending the suppression of the self-constituted legis- 
lature of Dublin. A bill was brought in ; it passed both Houses 
by large majorities ; it received the Royal assent. And what effect 
did it produce ? Exactly as much as that old Act of Queen Eliza- 
beth, still unrepealed, by which it is provided that every man who, 
without a special exemption, shall eat meat on Fridays and Satur- 
days, shall pay a fine of 20s. or go to prison for a month. Not 
only was the Association not destroyed ; its power was not for one 
day suspended ; it flourished and waxed strong under the law which 
bad been made for the purpose of annihilating it. The elections 



STATE OF ttJE tfAMOK. 

of 1826 — the Clare election two years later — proved the folly o£ 
those who think that nations are governed by wax and parchment 
— and, at length, in the close of 1828, the Government had only 
one plain alternative before it — concession or civil war. Sir, I 
firmly believe, that if the people of England shall lose all hope 
of carrying the Reform Bill by constitutional means, they wiT 
forthwith begin to offer to the Government the same kind of resist 
ance which was offered to the late Government, three years ago 
by the people of Ireland — a resistance by no means amounting tc 
rebellion — a resistance rarely amounting to any crime defined by 
the law — but a resistance nevertheless which is quite sufficient tc 
obstruct the course of justice, to disturb the pursuits of industry 
and to prevent the accumulation of wealth. And is not this a dan- 
ger which we ought to fear ? And is not this a danger which we are 
bound, by all means in our power, to avert? And who are those 
who taunt us for yielding to intimidation ? Who are those who 
affect to speak with contempt of associations, and agitators, and 
public meetings ? Even the very persons who, scarce two years 
ago, gave up to associations, and agitators, and public meetings, 
their boasted Protestant Constitution, proclaiming all the time that 
they saw the evils of Catholic Emancipation as strongly as ever. 
Surely — surely — the note of defiance which is now so loudly 
sounded in our ears, proceeds with a peculiarly bad grace from 
men whose highest glory it is that they abased themselves to the 
dust before a people whom their policy had driven to madness — 
from men the proudest moment of whose lives was that in which 
they appeared in the character of persecutors scared into toleration 
Do they mean to indemnify themselves for the humiliation of quail- 
ing before the people of Ireland by trampling on the people of 
England ? If so, they deceive themselves. The case of Ireland, 
though a strong one, was by no means so strong a case as that 
with which we have now to deal. The Government, in its strug- 
gle with the Catholics of Ireland, had Great Britain at its back, 



STATE OF THE NATION. 12* 

Whom will it have at its back in the struggle with the Reformers 
of Great Britain? I know only two ways in which societies can 
permanently be governed — by public opinion, and by the sword. 
A Government having at its command the armies, the fleets, and 
the revenues of Great Britain, might possibly hold Ireland by the 
sword. So Oliver Cromwell held Ireland ; so William ILL held 
it; so Mr. Pitt held it ; so the Duke of Wellington might perhaps 
have held it. But to govern Great Britain by the sword — so wild 
a thought has never, I will venture to say, occurred to any public 
man of any party ; and, if any man were frantic enough to make 
the attempt, he would find, before three days had expired, that 
there is no better sword than that which is fashioned out of a 
ploughshare. But, if not by the sword, how is the country to be 
governed ? I understand how the peace is kept at New York. It 
is by the assent and support of the people. I understand also how 
the peace is kept at Milan. It is by the bayonets of the Austrian 
soldiers. But how the peace is to be kept when you have neither 
the popular assent nor the military force — how the peace is to be 
kept in England by a Government acting on the principles of the 
present Opposition, I do not understand. There is in truth a great 
anomaly in the relation between the English people and their 
Government. Our institutions are either too popular or not popu- 
lar enough. The people have not sufficient power in making the 
Ihws ; but they have quite sufficient power to impede the execution 
of the laws once made. The Legislature is almost entirely aristo- 
cratical ; the machinery by which the decrees of the Legislature 
are carried into effect is almost entirely popular; and, therefore, we 
constantly see all the power which ought to execute the law, em- 
ployed to counteract the law. Thus, for example, with a criminal 
code which carries its rigour to the length of atrocity, we have a 
criminal judicature which often carries its lenity to the length of per- 
jury. Our law of libel is the most absurdly severe that ever existed 
—so absurdly severe that ? if it were carried into full effect ? it would 



128 STATE OF THE NATION 

be much more oppressive than a censorship. And yet, with this 
severe law of libei, we have a Press which practically is as free as 
the air. In 1819 the Ministers complained of the alarming increase 
of seditious and blasphemous publications. They proposed a law 
of great rigour to stop the growth of the evil ; and they obtained 
their law. It was enacted, that the publisher of a seditious libel 
might, on a second conviction, be banished, and that if he should 
return from banishment, he might be transported. How often was 
this law put in force? Not once. Last year we repealed it; but 
it was already dead, or rather it was dead born. It was obsolete 
before le Roi le veut had been pronounced over it. For any effect 
which it produced it might as well have been in the Code Napo- 
leon as in the English Statute-book. And why did the Govern- 
ment, having solicited and produced so sharp and weighty a wea- 
pon, straightway hang it up to rust ? Was there less sedition, 
were there fewer libels, after the passing of the Act than before it ? 
Sir, the very next year was the year 1820 — the year of the Bill of 
Pains and Penalties — the very year when the public mind was 
most excited — the very year when the public Press was most scur- 
rilous. Why then did not the Ministers use their new law ? Be- 
cause they durst not ; because they could not. They had obtained 
it with ease ; for in obtaining it they had to deal with a subservi- 
ent Parliament. They could not execute it ; for in executing it they 
would have to deal with a refractory people. These are instances 
of the difficulty of carrying the law into effect when the people art; 
inclined to thwart their rulers. The great anomaly, or, to speak 
more properly, the great evil which I have described, would, I 
believe, be removed by the Reform Bill. That Bill would esta- 
blish perfect harmony between the people and the Legislature. It 
would give a fair share in the making of laws to those without 
whose co operation laws are mere waste paper. Under a reformed 
system we should not see, as we now often see, the nat'on repeal- 
ing Acts of Parliament as fast as we and the Lords can pr*ss theni. 



STATE OF THE NATIoN. 129 

As ] believe that the Reform Bill would produce this blessed and 
salutary concord, so I fear that the rejection of the Reform Bill, if 
that rejection should be considered as final, will awravate the evil 
whicli I have been describing to an unprecedented, to a terrible 
extent. To all the laws which might be passed for the collection 
of the revenue, or for the prevention of sedition, the people would 
oppose the same kind of resistance by means of which they have 
succeeded in mitigating — I might say in abrogating — the law of 
libel. There would be so many offenders, that tfye Government 
would scarcely know at whom to aim its blow. Every offender 
would have so many accomplices and protectors, that the blow 
would almost always miss the aim. The veto of the people — a 
vKo not pronounced in set form, like that of the Roman Tribunes, 
but quite as effectual as that of the Roman Tribunes — for the pur- 
pose of impeding public measures, would meet the Government at 
every turn. The Administration would be unable to preserve 
order at home, or to uphold the national honour abroad : and at 
length k&fr. who are now moderate, who now think of revolution 
with tioi mr, would begin to wish that the lingering agony of the 
State might be terminated by one fierce, sharp, decisive crisis ? [s 
there a way of escape from these calamities? I believe that there 
is. I believe that if we do our duty — if we give the people reason 
to believe that the accomplishment of their wishes is only deferred 
— if we declare our undiminished attachment to the Reform Bill, 
and our resolution to support no Minister who will not support 
that Bill, we shall avert the fearful disasters which impend over 
the country. There is danger that, at this conjuncture, men of 
.noie zeal than wisdom may obtain a fatal influence over the pub- 
lic mind. With these men will be joined others, who have neither 
zeal nor wisdom — common barrators in politics —dregs of society 
which, in times of violent agitation, are tossed up from the bottom 
to the top, and which, in quiet times, sink again from the top to 
tJK'ir natural place at the bottom. To these men nothing is so hate- 



130 STATE OF THE NATION. 

ful as the prospect of a reconciliation between the orders of the 
State. A crisis like that, which now makes ever} 7 honest citizen 
sad and anxious, fills these men with joy, and with a detestable 
hope. And how is it that such men, formed by nature and educa- 
tion to be objects of mere contempt, can ever inspire terror \ 
How is it that such men, without talents or acquirements sufficient 
for the management of a vestrv, sometimes become dangerous to 
great empires? The secret of their power lies in the indolence or 
faithlessness of those who ought to take the lead in the redress of 
public grievances. The whole history of low traders in sedition is 
contained in that fine old Hebrew fable which we Have all read in 
the Book of Judges. The trees meet to choos« a king. The vine, 
and the fig-tree, and the olive tree, decline the office. Then it is 
that the sovereignty of the forest devolves upon the bramble : then 
it is that from a base and noxious shrub goes forth the fire which 
devours the cedars of Lebanon. Let us be instructed. If we arc 
afraid of Political Unions, and Reform Associations, let the House 
of Commons become the chief point of political union ; let the 
House of Commons be the great Reform association. If we are 
afraid that the people may attempt to accomplish their wishes by 
unlawful means, let us give them a solemn pledge that we will use 
in their cause all our high and ancient privileges — so often victo- 
rious in old conflicts with tyranny — those privileges which our 
ancestors invoked, not in vain, on the day when a faithless King 
filled our house with his guards, took his seat, Sir, on your chair, 
and saw your predecessor kneeling on the floor before him. The 
Constitution of England, thank God, is not one of those Constitu- 
tions which are past all repair, and which must, for the public wel- 
fare, be utterly destroyed. It has a decayed part ; but it has also 
a sound and precious part. It requires purification ; but it con- 
tains within itself the means by which that purification may be 
effected. We read that in old times, when the villeins were 
driven to revolt by oppression, when the castles of the nobility 



SfATE Of iiiK KAttoS\ 1^1 

Were burned to the ground — when the warehouses of London were 
pillaged — when a hundred thousand insurgents appeared in anna 
on Blaekheath — when a foul murder perpetrated in their presence 
had raised their passions to madness — when they were looking 
round for some captain to succeed and avenge him whom they had 
lost — just then, before Hob Miller, or Tom Carter, or Jack Straw, 
could place himself at their head, the King rode up to them j,nd 
exclaimed, " I will be your leader" — and at once the infuriated 
multitude laid down their arms, submitted to his guidance — dis- 
persed at his command. Herein let us imitate him. Our coun- 
trymen are, I fear, at this moment, but too much disposed to lend 
a credulous ear to selfish impostors. Let us say to them, " We are 
your leaders — we, your own House of Commons — we, the consti- 
tutional interpreters of your wishes — the knights of forty English 
shires, the citizens and burgesses of all vour largest towns. Our 
lawful power shall be firmly exerted to the utmost in your cause ; 
and our lawful power is such, that when firmly exerted in your cause 
it must finally prevail." This tone it is our interest and our duty 
to take. The circumstances admit of no delay. Is there one 
among us who is not looking with breathless anxiety for the next 
tidings which may arrive from the remote parts of the kingdom? 
Even while I speak the moments are passing away — the irrevocable 
moments pregnant with the destiny of a great people. The coun- 
try is in danger; it may be saved; we can save it. This is the 
way — this is the time. In our hands are the issues of great good 
and great evil — the issues of the life and death of the State. May 
the result of our deliberations be the repose and prosperity of that 
noble country which is entitled to all our love ; and for the safety 
of whieh we are answerable to our consciences, to the memory of 
future ages, to the Judge "»f all hearts ! 



Ifi2 



ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM * 

DECEMBER 16, 1831. 

I can assure my noble friend, for whom I entertain sentiments of 
respect and kindness, which no political difference will, I trust, ever 
disturb, that his remarks have given me no pain, except, indeed, 
the pain which I feel at being compelled to say a few words about 
myself. Those words shall be very few. I know how unpopular 
egotism is in this House. My noble friend says, that, in the debates 
of last March, I declared myself opposed to the ballot, and that I 
have since recanted, for the purpose of making myself popular with 
the inhabitants of Leeds. My noble friend is altogether mistaken. 
I never said in any debate, that I was opposed to the ballot. The 
word ballot never passed my lips within this House. I observed 
strict silence respecting it on two accounts : in the first place, 
because my own opinions were, till very lately, undecided ; in the 
second place, because I knew that the agitation of that question, a 
question of which the importance appears to me to be greatly over- 
rated, would divide those on whose firm and cordial union the 
safety of the empire depends. My noble friend has taken this 
opportunity of replying to a speech which I made last October. 
The doctrines which I then laid down were, according to him, most 
intemperate and dangerous. Now, Sir, it happens curiously 
enough, that my noble friend has himself asserted, in his speech of 
this night, those very doctrines, in language so nearly resembling 
mine, that I might fairly accuse him of plagiarism. I said, that 
jaws have no force in themselves, and that unless supported by 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. ix p. S7S-3P2. 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 1$3 

public opinion, they are a mere dead letter. The noble Lord has 
said exactly the same thing to-nigu'. "Keep your old Constitu- 
tion," is his argument; " for whatever may be its defects in theory, 
it has more of the public veneration than your new constitution 
will have ; and no laws can be efficient, unless they have the public 
veneration." I said, that statutes are in themselves only wax and 
parchment, and I was called an incendiary by the Opposition. The 
noble Lord has said to-night, that statutes in themselves are only 
ink and parchment ; and those very persons who reviled me, have 
enthusiastically cheered him. It is, evidently, not from the prin- 
ciple which I laid clown, but from the application of the principle 
that they dissent. But, Sir, it is time that I should address myself 
to the momentous question before us. I shall certainly give mj 
best support to this Bill through all its stages ; and in so doing, I 
conceive that I shall act in strict, conformity with the resolution by 
which this House, towards the close of the late Session, declared 
its unabated attachment to the principles and to the leading provi- 
sions of the first Reform Bill. All those principles, all those lead- 
ing provisions, I find in the present measure. In the details there 
are, undoubtedly, considerable alterations. Most of the alterations 
appear to me to be improvements ; and even those alterations 
which I cannot consider as being in themselves improvements, will 
yet be most useful, if their effect shall be to conciliate opponent*, 
and to facilitate the adjustment of a question which, for the sak« 
of order, for the sake of peace, for the sake of trade, ought to be not 
only satisfactorily, but speedily settled. We have been told, Sir, 
that, if we pronounce this Bill to be a better Bill than the last, we 
recant all the doctrines which we maintained durino- the last Ses- 
sion ; we sing our palinode ; we allow that we have had a great 
escape ; we allow that our own conduct was deserving of censure ; 
we allow that the party which was the minority in this House, and, 
most unhappily for the country, the majority in the other 
House, has saved the country from a great calamity. Sir, even if 



l : *4 PAHUAMF.NTARV KfePOkM. 

this charge were well founded, there are those who should lia.g 
been prevented by prudence, if not by magnanimity, from bringing 
it forward. I remember an Opposition which took a very different 
course. I remember an Opposition which, while excluded from 
power, taught all its doctrines to the Government; w r hich, afte. 
labouring long, and sacrificing much, in order to effect improve- 
ments in various parts of our system, saw the honuor of those 
improvements appropriated by others. But the members of that 
Opposition had, I believe, a sincere desire to promote the public 
good. They, therefore, raised no shout of triumph over the recan- 
tations of their neophytes. They rejoiced, but with no ungenerous 
joy, when their principles of trade, of jurisprudence, of foreign 
policy, of religious liberty, became the principles of the Adminis- 
tration. They were content that he who came into fellowship with 
them at the eleventh hour should have a far larger share of the 
reward than those who had borne the burthen and heat of the day. 
In the year 1328, a single division in this House changed the 
whole policy of the Government with respect to the Test and Cor- 
poration Acts. My noble friend, the Paymaster of the Forces, then 
sat where the right Hon. Baronet, the member for Tarn worth, now 
sits. I do not remember that when the right hon. Baronet an- 
nounced his change of purpose, my noble friend sprang up to talk- 
about palinodes, to magnify the wisdom and virtue of the Whigs, 
and to sneer at his new coadjutors. Indeed, I am not sure that, 
the members of the late Opposition did not carry their indulgence 
too far — that they did not too easily suffer the fame of Grattan and 
Romilly to be transferred to less deserving claimants — that they 
were not too ready, in the joy with which they welcomed the tardy 
and convenient repentance of their converts, to grant a general 
amnesty for the errors Or the insincerity of years. If it were true 
that we had recanted, this ought not to be made matter of charge 
against us by men whom posterity will remember by nothing but 
recantations. But, in truth, we recant nothing — we have nothing 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 135 

to recant.-— We support this Bill — we may possibly think it abetter 
Bill than that which preceded it. But are we therefore bound tc 
admit that we were in the wrong — that the Opposition was in the 
right — that the House of Lords has conferred a great benefit on the 
nation ? We saw — who did not see — great defects in the first Bill ? 
— But did we see nothing else ? fs delay no evil ? Is prolonged 
excitement no evil ? Is it no evil that the Heart of a great people 
should be made sick by deferred hope ? AVe allow that many of the 
changes which have been made are improvements. But we think 
that it would have been far better for the country to have had the last 
Bill, with all its defects, than the present Bill, with all its improve- 
ments. Second thoughts are proverbially the best, but there are 
emergencies which do not admit of second thoughts. There proba- 
bly never was a law which might not have been amended by delay. 
But there have been many cases in which there would have been 
more mischief in the delay, than benefit in the amendments. The first 
Bill, however inferior it may have been in its details to the present 
Bill, was yet herein far superior to the present Bill — that it was the 
first. If the first Bill had passed, it would, I firmly believe, have 
produced a complete reconciliation between the aristocracy and the 
people. It is my earnest wish and prayer that the present Bill 
may produce this blessed effect ; but I cannot say that my hopes arc 
so sanguine as they were at the beginning of the last Session. The 
decision of the House of Lords has, I fear, excited in the public 
mind feelings of resentment which will not soon be allayed. What 
then, it is said, would you legislate in haste? Would you legislate 
in times of great excitement concerning matters of such deep con- 
cern ? Yes, Sir, I would : and if any bad consequences should 
follow from the haste and the excitement, let those be held answer- 
able who, when there was no need of haste, when there existed no 
excitement, refused to listen to any project of Reform — nay, who 
made it an argument against Reform, that the public mind tjras not 
excited. When few meetings were held, when few petitions wer$ 



136 PARLIAMENTARY REFOKM. 

sent up to us, these politicians said, " Would you alter a Constitu- 
tion with which the people are perfectly satisfied V And now, 
when the kingdom from one end to the other is convulsed by the 
question of Reform, we hear it said by the very same persons, 
" Would you alter the Representative system in such agitated 
times as these ?" Half the Wic of misffovernment lies in this Due 
sophistical dilemma: — If the people are turbulent, they are unfit for 
liberty : if they are quiet, they do not want liberty. I allow, that 
hastv legislation is an evil. 1 allow that there are great objections 
to legislating in troubled times. But Reformers are compelled to 
legislate fast, because bigots will not legislate early. Reformers are 
compelled to legislate in times of excitement, because bigots will 
not legislate in times of tranquillity. If, ten years ago — nay, if 
only two years ago, there had been at the head of affairs, men who 
understood the signs of the times and the temper of the nation, we 
should not have been forced to hurry now. If we cannct take our 
time, it is because we have to make up their lost time. If they had 
reformed gradually, we might have reformed gradually ; but we 
a~e compiled to move fast, because they would not move at all. 
Though I admit, Sir, that this Bill is in its details superior to the 
former Bill, I must say, that the best parts of this Bill — those parts 
for the sake of which principally I support it — those parts for the 
sake of which I would support it, however imperfect its details 
might be, are parts which it has in common with the former Bill. 
It destroys nomination ; it admits the great body of the middle 
orders to a share in the government; and it contains provisions 
which will, as I conceive, greatly diminish the expense of elections. 
Touching the expense of elections, I will say a few words, because 
that part of the subject has not, I think, received so much atten- 
tion as it deserves. Whenever the nomination boroughs are 
attacked, the opponents of Reform produce a long list of eminent 
men who have sat for those boroughs, and who, they tell us, would 
never have taken any part in public affairs but for those boroughs 



PAUUAMkVTAKV "MlKoint. 13* 

Now, Sir, I suppose no person will maintain that a large constitu* 
ent body is likely to prefer ignorant and incapable men, to men of 
information and ability? Whatever objections there may be to 
democratic institutions, it was never, I believe, doubted that those 
institutions are favourable to the development of talents. We may 
prefer the constitution of Sparta to that of Athens, or the constitu- 
tion of Venice to that of Florence, but no person will deny that 
Athens produced more great men than Sparta, or that Florence 
produced more great men than Venice. But to come nearer home : 
the five largest English towns which now have the right of return- 
ing two Members each by popular election, are Westminster, South- 
wark, Liverpool, Bristol, and Norwich. Now let us see what 
Members those {daces have sent to Parliament. I will not speak 
of the living, though among the living are some of the most dis- 
tinguished ornaments of the House. I will confine myself to the 
dead. Among many respectable and useful members of Parlia- 
ment, whom th^se towns have returned, during the last half cen- 
tury, I find Mr. Burke, Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Windham, Mr 
Tierney, Sir Samuel Komilly, Mr. Canning, Mr. Huskisson. These 
were eight of the most illustrious parliamentary leaders of the 
generation which is passing away from the world. Mr. Pitt was, 
perhaps, the only person worthy to make a ninth with them. It 
is, surely, a remarkable circumstance that, of the nine most dis- 
tinguished Members of the House of Commons who have died 
within the last forty years, eight should have been returned to Par- 
liament by the five largest represented towns. I am, therefore; 
warranted in saying, that great constituent bodies are quite as 
competent to discern merit, and quite as much disposed to reward 
merit, as the proprietors of boroughs. It is true that some of the 
distinguished statesmen whom I have mentioned would never have 
been known to large constituent bodies if they had not first sate for 
nomination boroughs. But, why is this ? Simply, because the 
expense of contesting popular places, under the present system, is 



iHu PARLIAMENTARY REKiriM. 

ruin on sly great. A poor man cannot defray it ; an untried mall 
cannot expect his constituents to defray it for him« And this i? 
the way in which our Representative system is defended. Cor- 
ruption vouches corruption. Every abuse is made the plea foi 
another abuse. We must have nomination at Gatton, because we 
have profusion at Liverpool. Sir, these arguments convince me, 
not that no Reform is required, but that a very deep and searching 
Reform is required. If two evils serve in some respects to coun« 
terbalance each other, this is a reason, not for keeping both, but 
for getting rid of both together. At present you close against men 
of talents that broad, that noble entrance which belongs to them, 
and which ought to stand wide open to them ; and in exchange 
you open to them a bye-entrance — low and narrow — always 
obscure — often filthy — through wdiich, too often, they can pass 
onlv by crawling on their hands and knees, and from which they 
too often emerge sullied with stains never to be washed away. 
But take the most favourable case. Suppose that the Member 
who sits for a nomination borough, owes his seat to a man of virtue 
and honour, to a man whose service is perfect freedom, to a man 
who would think himself degraded by any proof of gratitude which 
might degrade his nominee. Yet, is it nothing that he comes into 
this House wearing the badge, though not feeling the chain of ser- 
vitude ? Is it nothing that he cannot speak of his independence 
without exciting a smile ? Is it nothing that he is considered, not 
as a Representative, but as an adventurer ? This is what your 
system does for men of genius. It admits them to political power, 
not as, under better institutions, they would be admitted to power, 
erect — independent — unsullied — but by means which corrupt the 
virtue of many, and in some degree diminish the authority of all. 
Could any system be devised, better fitted to pervert the principles 
and break the spirit of men formed to be the glory of their country ? 
And, can we mention no instance in which this system has made 
such men useless, or worse than useless, to the country of which 



PARLIAMENTARY RKFORM. l.'U) 

their talents were the ornament, and might, under bappiei' cireuim 
stances, have been the salvation \ Ariel — the beautiful and kindly* 
Ai>iel, doing the bidding; of the loathsome and malignant Kvcorax 
io but a faint type of genius enslaved by the spells, and employed 
in the drudgery, of corruption— 

" A spirit too delicate 
"To act those earthy and abhorred commands." 

We cannot do a greater service to men of real merit, than bv 
destroying that system which has been called their refuge — which 
is their house of bondage; by taking from them the patronage of 
the great, and giving to them in its stead the respect and confi- 
dence of the people. The P>ill now before us will, I believe, pro- 
duce that happy effect. It facilitates the canvass; it reduces the 
expense of legal agency ; it shortens the poll ; above all, it dis- 
franchises the out-voters. It is not easy to calculate the precise 
extent to which these changes will diminish the cost of elections. 
I have attempted, however, to obtain some information on this 
subject. I have applied to a gentleman of great experience in 
affairs of this kind — a gentleman who, at the three last general 
elections, managed the finances of the popular party in one of the 
largest boroughs in the kingdom. He tells me, that at the general 
election of 1826, when the borough was contested, the expenses of 
the popular candidate amounted to 18,000/. ; and that by the best 
estimate which can now be made, the borough may, under the 
reformed system, be as effectually contested for one-tenth part of 
that sum. In the new constituent bodies there are no ancient 
rights reserved. In those bodies, therefore, the expense of an elec- 
tion will be still smaller. I firmly believe, that it will be possible 
to poll out Manchester for less than the market price of Old Shi am 
Sir, I have, from the beginning of these discussions, supported 
reform on two grounds, first, because I believe it to be in itself ? 
good thing — and secondly, because I think the dangers of wit*;- 



140 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

holding it to be so great, that even if it were an evil, it would be 
the less of two evils. The dangers of the country have in no wise 
diminished. I believe that they have greatly increased. It is, I 
fear, impossible to deny, that what has happened with respect to 
almost every great question that ever divided mankind has hap- 
pened also with respect to the Reform Bill. Wherever great inte- 
rests are at stake there will be much excitement, and wherever 
there is much excitement there will be some extravagance. 
The same great stirring of the human mind which produced 
the Reformation produced also the follies and crimes of the 
Anabaptists. The same spirit which resisted the Ship-money, 
and abolished the Star-chamber, produced the Levellers and the 
Fifth-monarchy men. And so, it cannot be denied that bad men, 
availing themselves of the agitation produced by the question of 
Reform, have promulgated, and promulgated with some success, 
doctrines incompatible with the existence — I do not say of mo- 
narchy, or of aristocracy —but of all law, of all order, of all pro- 
perty, of all civilization, of all that makes us to differ from 
Mohawks or Hottentots. I bring no accusation against that por- 
tion of the working classes which has been imposed upon by these 
doctrines. Those persons are what their situation has made them 
— ignorant from want of leisure — irritable from the sense of dis- 
tress. That they should be deluded by impudent assertions, and 
gross sophisms-— that, suffering cruel privations, they should give 
read) 7 credence to promises of relief—that, never having inves- 
tigated the nature and operation of government, they should expect 
impossibilities from it, and should reproach it for not performing 
impossibilities — all this is perfectly natural. No errors which they 
may commit, ought ever to make us forget that it is in all proba- 
bility ow r ing solely to the accident of our situation that we have 
lot fallen into errors precisely similar. There are few of us who 
io not know from experience, that, even with ail our advantages of 
vducation, pain and sorrow can make us very querujo-us and verjr 



PAWT.IAMEXTART REFORM. 141 

unreasonable. We ought not, therefore, to L>e surprised that, as tho 
Scotch proverb says, " it should be ill talking between a full man 
and a fasting;" that the logic of the rich man who vindicates the 
rights of property, should seem very inconclusive to the poor man 
who hears his children cry for bread. I bring, T say, no accusation 
against the working classes. I would withhold from them nothing 
which it might be for their good to possess. 1 see with pleasure .that 
by the provisions of the Reform Bill, the most industrious and res- 
pectable of our labourers will be admitted to a share in the govern- 
ment of the State. If I would refuse to the working people that 
larger share of power which some of them have demanded, I would 
refuse it, because I am convinced that, by giving it, I should only 
increase their distress. I admit that the end of government is their 
happiness. But, that they may be governed for their happiness, they 
must not be governed according to the doctrines which they have 
learned from their illiterate, incapable, low-minded flatterers. But, 
Sir, the fact that such doctrines have been promulgated among the 
multitude is a strong argument for a speedy and effectual Reform. 
That government is attacked is a reason for making the founda- 
tions of government broader, and deeper, and more solid. That 
property is attacked, is a reason for binding together all proprietors 
in the firmest union. That the agitation of the question of Reform 
has enabled worthless demagogues to propagate their notions with 
some success, is a reason for speedily settling the question in the 
only way in which it can be settled. It is difficult, Sir, to conceive 
any spectacle more alarming than that which presents itself to us, 
when we look at the two extreme parties in this country — a nar- 
row oligarchy above — an infuriated multitude below, — on the one 
side the vices engendered by power ; on the other side the vices 
engendered by distress ; the one party blindly averse to improve- 
ment, the other party blindly clamouring for destruction— the one 
party ascribing to political abuses the sanctity of property, the 
other party crying out against property as a political abuse, Both 



142 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

these parties are aiike ignorant of their true interest. God forbid 
that the State should ever be at the mercy of either, or should evei 
experience the calamities whieh must result from a colJision between 
them ! I anticipate no such horrible event. For, between thos<j 
two parties stands a third part}', infinitely more powerful than both 
the others put together, attacked by both, vilified by both, but des- 
tined, I trust, to save both from the fatal effects of their own folly. 
Io that party I have never ceased, through all the vicissitudes of 
public affairs, to look with confidence, and with a good hope. I 
speak of that great party which zealously and steadily supported 
the first Reform BUI', and which will, I have no doubt, support thu 
second Reform Bill with equal steadiness, and equal zeal. That 
party is the middle class of England, with the llower of the aristo- 
cracy at its head, and the flow r er of the working classes bringing up 
its rear. That great party has taken its immovable stand between 
the enemies of all order, and the enemies of all liberty. It will 
have Reform : it will not have Revolution : it will destroy political 
abuses — it will not suffer the rights of property to be assailed — it 
will preserve, in spite of themselves, those who are assailing it, from 
the right and from the left, with contradictory accusations — it will 
be a daysman between them — it will lay its hand upon them both 
— it will not suffer them to tear each other in pieces. While that 
great party continues unbroken, as it now is unbroken, I shall not 
relinquish the hope that this great contest may be conducted, by 
lawful means, to a happy termination. But, of this I am assured, 
that, by means, lawful or unlawful, to a termination, happy 01 
unhappy, this contest must speedily come. All that I know of the 
history of past times— all the observations that I have been able tc 
make on the present state of the country — have convinced me, that 
the time has arrived, when a great concession must be made to t lie 
democracy of England — that the question, whether the change be 
in itself good or bad, has become a question of secondary import- 

awce-^-Uiai, good w had. thy thing must be don^ — that a law %$ 



PAtUtAMENTAUV REFOKM. 14.1 

*U* >ng as the laws of attraction and motion has decreed it. I well 
know that history, when we look at it in small portions, may b< 
so construed as to mean any thing — that it may be interpreted ir 
as many ways as a Delphic oracle. " The French Revolution,' 
says one expositor, " was the effect of concession." " Not so," 
cries another, " the French Revolution was produced by the obsti- 
nacy of an arbitrary government." "If the French nobles," says 
the first, " had refused to sit with the tiers e'at, they would never 
have been driven from their country." "They would never have 
been driven from their country," answers the other, " if they had 
agreed to the reforms proposed by M. Turgot." These controver- 
sies can never be brought to any decisive test, or to any satisfactory 
conclusion. But, as I believe that history, when we look at it in 
small fragments, proves any thing, or nothing, so I believe that it 
is full of useful and precious instruction when we contemplate it. in 
large portions — when we take in, at one view, the whole life-time 
of great societies. I believe that it is possible to obtain some 
insight into the law which regulates the growth of communities. 
nv\ some knowledge of the effects which that growth produces. 
The history of England, in particular, is the history of a govern- 
ment constantly giving way — sometimes peaceably, sometimes 
after a violent struggle — but constantly giving wav before a nation 
which has been constantly advancing. The forest-laws — the law 
of villenage — the oppressive power of the Roman Catholic Church 
— the power, scarcely less oppressive, which, for some time after 
the Reformation, was exercised by the Protestant Establishment — 
the prerogatives of the Crown — the censorship of the Press-- suc- 
cessively yielded. The abuses of the Representative system are 
now yielding to the same irresistible force. It was impossible for 
tire btuarts — and it would have been impossible for them if they 
had possessed all the energy of Richelieu; and all the craft of 
Mazarin, — to govern England as it had been governed bv the 
Tudors. It was impossible for the princes of the House of Hanovei 



144 *»AKLlAM£NTARt kEJPOkM. 

to govern England as it had been governed by the Stuarts. An. I & 
it is impossible that England should be any longer governed as it 
was governed under the four first princes of the House of Hanover. 
I say impossible. I believe that over the great changes of the moral 
world we possess as little power as over the great changes of '.he 
physical world. We can no more prevent time from changing the 
distribution of property and of intelligence — we can no more pre- 
vent property and intelligence from aspiring to political power — 
than we can chano-e the courses of the seasons and of the tides. 
In peace or in tumult — by means of old institutions, where thos6 
institutions are flexible — over the ruins of old institutions, where 
those institutions oppose an unbending resistance, the great march 
of society proceeds, and must proceed. The feeble efforts of indi- 
viduals to bear back are lost and swept away in the mighty rush 
with which the species goes onward. Those who appear to lead 
the movement are, in fact, only whirled along before it; those who 
attempt to resist it, are beaten down and crushed beneath it. It is 
because rulers do not pay sufficient attention to the stages of this 
great movement — because they underrate its force — because they 
are ignorant of its law, that so many violent and fearful revolu- 
tions have changed the face of society. We have heard it said a 
hundred times during 1 these discussions — we have heard it said 
repeatedly, in the course of this very debate, that the people of 
England are more free than ever they were — that the Government 
is more democratic than ever it was ; and this is urged as an argu- 
ment against Reform. I admit the fact ; but I deny the inference. 
It is a principle never to be forgotten, in discussions like this, that 
it is not by absolute, but by relative misgovernment that nations 
are roused to madness. It is not sufficient to look merely at the 
form of government. We must look also to the state of the public 
mind. The worst tyrant that ever had his neck wrung in modern 
Europe might have passed for a paragon of clemency in Persia 61 
Morocco. Our Indian subjects submit patiently to a monopoly of 



PAfcLtAMBKfAKf fefeFORM. 145 

salt. We tried a stamp duty — a duty so light as to be scarcely 
perceptible — on the fierce breed of the old Puritans ; and we lost 
an empire. The Government of Louis 16th was certainly a much 
better and milder government than that of Louis 14th ; yet Louis 
14th was admired, and even loved, by his people. Louis 16th 
died on the scaffold. Why ? Because, though the government 
had made many steps in the career of improvement, it had not 
advanced so rapidly as the nation. Look at our own history. The 
liberties of the people were at least as much respected by Charles 
1st, as by Henry 8th — by James 2nd, as by Edward 6th. 13ut did 
this save the crown of James 2nd ? Did this save the head of 
Charles 1st? Every person who knows the history of our civil 
dissensions, knows that all those arguments which are now em- 
ployed by the opponents of the Reform Bill, might have been 
employed, and were actually employed, by the unfortunate Stuarts. 
The reasoning of Charles, and of all his apologists, runs thus : — 
" What new grievance does the nation suffer ? What has the 
King done more than what Henry did — more than what Elizabeth 
did ? Did tlie people ever enjoy more freedom that at present — ■ 
did they ever enjoy so much freedom ?" But what would a wise 
and honest counsellor — if Charles had been so happy as to possess 
such a counsellor — have replied to arguments like these? lie 
would have said, " Sir, I acknowledge that the people were never 
more free than under your government. I acknowledge that those 
who talk of restoring the old Constitution of En o-] and use an im- 
proper expression. 1 acknowledge that there has been a constant 
improvement during those very years, in which many persons ima- 
gine that there has been a constant deterioration. But though 
there has been no change in the government for the worse, there 
has been a change in the public mind, which produces exactly the 
same eftect which would be produced by a change in tlie govern- 
ment for the worse. Peihaps this change in the public mind is to 
be regretted. But no matter ; you cannot reverse it. You cannot 

VOL. I. 1 



.140 PARLIAMENTARY Hfct'OttM. 

undo nil that- eighty eventful years have done. You' cannot trrtti§' 
form the Englishmen of 1640 into the Englishmen of 1660. It 
may be that the submissive loyalty of our fathers was preferable tc 
that inquiring, censuring, resisting spirit which is now abroad. It 
may he, that the times when men paid their benevolences cheer- 
fully were better times than these, when a gentleman goes before 
the Exchequer Chamber to resist an assessment of 20s. And so it 
may be, that infancy is a happier time than manhood, and man- 
hood than old age. But God has decreed that old age shall suc- 
ceed to manhood, and manhood to infancy. Even so have socie- 
ties their law of growth. As their strength becomes greater — as 
their experience becomes more extensive, you can no longer con- 
line them within the swaddling-bands, or lull them in the cradles, 
or amuse them with the rattles, or terrify them with the bugbears 
of their infancy. I do not say, that they are better or happier than 
they were ; but this I say ; — they are different from what they 
were : you cannot again make them what they were, and you 
cannot safely treat them as if they continued to be what they 
were." This was the advice which a wise and honest Minister 
would have given to Charles 1st. These were the principles on 
which that unhappy prince should have acted. But no. He 
would govern — 1 do not say ill — I do not say tyrannically ; I say 
only this, he would govern the men of the seventeenth century as 
if they had been the men of the sixteenth century; -and therefoie 
it was, that all his talents and all his virtues did not save him from 
unpopularity — from civil war — from a prison — from a bar — from a 
scaffold. These things are written for our instruction. Another great 
intellectual revolution has taken place ; our lot has been cast on a 
time analogous, in many respects, to the time which immediately 
preceded the meeting of the Long Parliament. There is a change 
in society. There must be a corresponding change in the govern- 
ment. We are not — we cannot, in the nature of things, be — what 
pur fathers were. We are no more like the men of the American 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 147 

war, or the men <>f the gagging bill ; than the men who cried 

" privilege" round the conch of Charles 1st were like the men whc 
changed their religion once a year, at the bidding of Henry 8th 
That there is such a change, I can no more doubt than i can doubt 
that we have more power-looms, more steam-engines, more gas- 
lights, than our ancestors. That there is such a change, the 
Minister will surely f.nd — if ever such a Minister should arise — 
who shall attempt to fit the yoke of Mr. Pitt to the necks of the 
Englishmen of the nineteenth century. What then can you do to 
bring back those times when the constitution of this House was an 
object of veneration to the people ? Even as much as Strafford and 
Laud could do to bring back the days of the Tudors— as much as 
Bonner and Gardiner could do to bring back the days of Hilde- 
brand — as much as Villele and Polignac could do to bring back 
the days of Louis 14th. You may make the change tedious ; you 
may make it violent ; you may — God in his mercy forbid ! — you 
may make it bloody; but avert it you cannot. Agitations of the 
public mind, so deep and so long continued as those which we have 
witnessed, do not end in nothing. In peace or in convulsion; by 
the law, or in spite of the law ; through the Parliament, or over 
the Parliament, reform must be carried. Therefore, be content to 
guide that movement which you cannot stop. Fling wide the 
gates to that force which, else will enter through the breach. Then 
will it still be, as it has hitherto been, the peculiar glory of our 
Constitution that, though not exempt from the decay which is 
wrought bv the vicissitudes of fortune, and the lapse of time, in all 
the proudest works of human power and wisdom, it yet contains 
within it the means of self-reparation. Then will England add to 
her manifold titles of glory this the noblest and the purest of all — 
that every blessing which other nations have been forced to seek, 
and have too often sought in vain, by means of violent and bloody 
revolutions, she will have attained by a peaceful and a lawful 
Reform. 



148 



ON THE ANATOMY BILL * 

FEBRUARY 27, 1832. 

Sir, I cannot, even at this late hour of the night, refrain fron. 
saying two or three words. Most of the observations of the hon. 
member for Preston I pass by, as undeserving of any answer, 
before an audience like this. But on one part of his speech, I 
must make a few remarks. We are, says he, making a law to 
benefit the riclV, at the expense of the poor. Sir, the fact is the 
direct reverse of this. This is a bill which tends especially to the 
benefit of the poor. What are the evils against which we are 
attempting to make provision? Two especially; that is to say, 
the practice of Burking and bad surgery. Now to both these the 
poor alone are exposed. What man, in our rank of life, runs the 
smallest risk of being Burked ? That a man has property, that 
he has connexions, that he is likely to be missed and sought for, 
are circumstances which secure him against the Burker. It is 
curious to observe the difference between murders of this kind and 
other murders. An ordinary murderer hides the body, and dis- 
poses of the property. Bishop and Williams dig holes and bury 
the property, and expose the body to sale. The more wretched, 
the more lonely, any human being may be, the more desirable 
prey is he to these wretches. It is the man, the mere naked man 
that they pursue. Again, as to bad surgery ; this is, of all evils, 
the evil by which the rich suffer least, and the poor most. If we 
could do all that in the opinion of the member for Preston ought 
to be done. — if we could prevent disinterment, — if we couJd 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. x. 1§32, p. 842-3. 



ANATOMY BILL. 149 

prevent dissection, — if we could destroy the English school of 
anatomy, — if we could force every student of the medical science 
to go to the expense of a foreign education, on whom would the 
bad consequences fall ? On the rich ? Not at all. As long as 
there is in France, in Italy, in Germany, a single surgeon of eminent 
skill, a single surgeon who is, to use the phrase of the member for 
Preston, addicted to dissection, that surgeon will be in attendance 
whenever an English nobleman is about to undergo a critical 
operation. The higher orders in England will always be able to 
procure the best medical assistance. Who suffers by the bad state 
of the Russian school of surgery ? The Emperor Nicholas? — l>y 
no means. But the poor dispersed over the country. If the edu- 
cation of a surgeon should become very expensive, if the lees of 
surgeons should rise, if the supply of regular surgeons should 
diminish, the sufferers would be, not the rich, but the poor in our 
country villages, who would again be left to mountebanks, and 
barbers, and old women ; to charms and quack medicines. The 
hon. Gentleman talks of sacrificing the interests of humanity to 
the interests of science, as if this were a question about the 
squaring of the circle, or the transit of Venus. This is not a mere 
question of science — it is not the unprofitable exercise of an inge- 
nious mind — it is a question of care and pain. It is a question of 
life and death. Does the hon. Gentleman know from what cruel 
sufferings the improvement of surgical science has rescued our 
species ? I will tell him one story, the first that comes into my 
head. He may have heard of Leopold, Duke of Austria, the 
same who imprisoned our Richard Cceur-de-Lion. Leopold's horse 
fell under him, and crushed his leg. The surgeons said that the 
limb must be amputated ; but none of them knew how to ampu- 
tate it. Leopold, in his agony, laid a hatchet on his thigh, and 
ordered his servant to strike with a mallet. The leg was cut off, 
and he died of the gusli of blood. Such was the end of that 
powerful prince. Why, there is not now a bricklayer who falls 



150 ANATOMY KILL. 

from a ladder in England, who cannot obtain surgical assistance, 
infinitely superior to that which the sovereign of Austria could 
command in the twelfth century. 1 think this a bill which tends to 
the good of the people, and which tends especially to the good of 
the poor. Therefore I support it. If it is unpopular, I am sorry 
for it. But I shall cheerfully take my share of its unpopularity. 
For such, 1 am convinced, ought to be the conduct of one whose 
object it is, not to flatter the people, but to serve them. 



Hi 



ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM .♦ 

FEBRUARY 28, 1832. 

The Bill for England, Committee, 11th Day. 

He felt unwilling to occupy the time of the House upon this sub- 
ject, after the observations which he had thought it his duty tc 
make in the course of the last Session. But the extreme solicitude 
he felt on account of the importance of the question, and of the 
peculiar circumstances under which they were called on to discuss 
it, compelled him to make a few observations on the subject. In 
that, as in every other place, the first grand object in the discus- 
sion of these questions was, to clear the ground, and settle upon 
whom lay the burthen of proof. It was his opinion, that the 
burden of proof in this instance lay upon the Opposition. He 
considered that he was speaking to a House of Reformers — there 
might be one or two exceptions ; but the great body on that and 
on the other side of the House had, he believed, agreed that some 
change in the Representation must take place. He did not assert 
that every individual in that House entertained that opinion ; but 
he could not avoid taking it for granted, that the great majority 
of the Opposition did ; for he was warranted in saying, that, in a 
great majority of the speeches they had delivered, they had 
admitted the necessity of some change. If he did not entertain 
the opinion he now expressed as to their sentiments, he must put 
aside all the addresses sent up from the country by the noblemen 
and gentlemen who, in their different counties, had opposed -his 

• Hansard, 3d Series, vol. x. 1832, p. y26-98fl 



15*2 PARLIAMENTARY reform. 

measure of Reform, but all of whom had said, that some ch^iigfr 
was necessary — that some Reform must take place — and tha 
some large bodies of people must have representatives given tc 
them. If the fact was as he had stated, they on the side of the 
House on which he sat proposed that, as part of the large commu- 
nities entitled to Representation, the metropolitan districts should 
be represented. If enfranchisement ought to be part of the Re- 
form that the times required, and that Gentlemen opposite admit- 
ted to be necessary, it was for those Gentlemen to shew why the 
places now proposed should not partake of the advantages of 
enfranchisement. He was aware that they had no precise standard 
by which to determine what were the towns that should receive 
Representatives. He should use the word importance, to con- 
stitute that standard ; for though it was possible to raise quibbles 
upon it, none could possibly deny, that, if they were compelled to 
bestow representation on one of two places, they would rather 
bestow it upon a town like Manchester than upon a petty village, 
and their choice would be guided by the greater importance of the 
place selected. If they took the amount of population as the . 
standard of importance — if they adopted that of the number of 
10/. houses — if they took the amount of the assessed taxes — if 
they took the wealth — if they adopted intelligence as their crite- 
rion — indeed, estimate it as they might, let them take any combi- 
nation of arithmetical figures that they pleased — let them multiply 
or divide — let them subtract or add — let them adopt the course 
pointed out by Lieutenant Drummond, or that of the hon. Membei 
who proposed to decide the question by the square root of popula- 
tion and taxes — in short, let them take whatever course of arith- 
metic they pleased, there was none from which these metropolitan 
districts would not come marked with the proofs of a most un- 
doubted importance. If they took population, wealth, and intel- 
ligence, as the standard by which to measure their decision, fifty 
would be a more proper number of Representatives than eight to 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. ]~3 

give to these districts. That was a fact recognised by the hon. 
and learned Gentleman himself. It was admitted by all hon 
Members that, in all these elements of fitness for the formation of 
a constituency, the metropolitan districts stood higher than any 
other. If so, it was for those who wished to withhold the enfran- 
chisement to give the reason why it should be withheld. The 
noble Lord had offered some reasons for refusing the Members 
to these districts, which reason*, the hon. and learned Gentleman 
had most elaborately exerted himself to upset. What, said the 
hon. and learned Gentleman, will you let loose 150,000 voters — 
will you give the rights of franchise to such an immense body ? 
Yes, said the noble Lord, I will add Marylebone to Westminster — 
I will give the Tower Hamlets and Finsbury to the City, and 
Lambeth to Southwark. Yes, they who had talked so much of 
swamping constituencies — who had exclaimed so loudiy against 
such a course — who affected so much dread of a large consti 
tuency — actually proposed to swamp Westminster with Maryle- 
bone ; to swamp the City with Finsbury and the Tower Hamlets ; 
and to swamp Southwark with Lambeth ; and that, too, although 
at the same time they described the present constituencies of each 
of these places as sufficiently numerous. What, were they not 
afraid of the unhealthful state of the metropolis — of the agitation 
excited by elections among such very large constituencies ? No, 
they seemed to be afraid of none of these things when they made 
the proposal. Of what, then, were they afraid ] Of eight Mem- 
bers. Simply of eight Members — th'at must be the cause of their 
fear. But the fear was still more remarkable, for the noble Lord 
proposed to add two Members to Middlesex ; so that it might be 
said, f .hat the noble Lord feared six members — a number not so 
great as was returned by some individual Peers under the present 
system to that House. The only argument against giving Repre- 
sentatives to the metropolitan districts was, that the Member* 
\Vpul4 be called to a very strict account bv their constituents ; that 



154 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

they would not speak their own sense, but merely the fluctuating 
sense of those who sent them as their Representatives. But that 
argument applied as strongly to the instances of Members returned 
by individuals. He did not understand the grounds on which 
those who represented the submission of Members to be called to 
account by a numerous constituenc}' as a disgrace, while they 
thought it a point of honour to submit to the same strictness of 
account to an individual. He did not understand that spirit of 
honour that could lick the heels of an oligarchy, while it spurned 
at the wishes of the people. He did not understand that point of 
honour which made a man boast that he had gone out of his seat 
because he had voted in a particular manner against the wish of 
one man, his patron, while he taunted another Member for quitting 
his seat solely because he had offended 12,000 persons. But sup- 
posing this strictness of calling to account to be an evil, was that 
evil confined to the metropolitan districts ? Certainly not. During 
the discussion on the Catholic Claims there were many Gentlemen 
who disguised their opinion — who compromised their real wishes 
and feelings — for fear of offending their constituents. He did not 
understand on what ground they were more afraid on the subject 
of the influence to be exercised by the constituency in the metro- 
politan districts than in other large towns. He knew an instance 
of an individual who declared that there were many Gentlemen 
who said on that occasion, that they could not vote for the Catholic 
Question, if they wished to retain their seats. That, however, was 
not the evil of popular Representation alone. It was the fault of 
all Representations, individual and numerous. To suppose other- 
wise would be to manifest an ignorance of human nature. But 
the great argument really was, in plain words, a dread of the pre- 
ponderance of the people. There might be some evil in that; but 
if it was an evil, it was one which this Bill would not increase. 
It had always been found that a great city exercised an influence 
over the empire of which it formed a part, but that influence wa/ 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 155 

not connected with the number of Representatives it possessed. It 
might, indeed, exist without the city having any Representative at 
all, and was nowhere so great as under arbitrary and despotic 
Governments. It was un necessary to remind the House that at 
Rome the despotic emperors, whiie they exercised the most un- 
bounded, and the most brutal tyranny over the people, yet thought 
it necessary to conciliate the populace with expensive shows. At 
Madrid, under their tyrannical government, the mob often com- 
pelled their despot king to promise the dismissal of an obnoxious 
Minister; they had done so in the reign of Charles II. and 
again in that of Charles III. They had rises in the streets; sur- 
rounded the palace of the king; compelled him to appear on the 
balcony, and to promise them all they demanded. That had 
nothing to do with the share which the people of Madrid had in 
the Cortes. If there was any country in which the people exer- 
cised a morbid influence over the government, it was in Turkey, 
in despotic Turkey — even there, where reigned the most abso- 
lute, the most unmitigated despotism, the most iron-handed 
tyranny, the Sultan was often forced to sacrifice his ministers, and 
obey the will of the people living in the neighbourhood of the 
Seraglio. That was an influence which nothing could take away 
but an earthquake like that of Lisbon. That species of influence 
would always be possessed by London, and nothing would remove 
it but such a fierce and dreadful calamity, as that which in a great 
degree overwhelmed this great city in 1606. But did the noble 
Lord propose to take away that influence ? The noble Lord knew 
it was impossible. From all time the City of London had been 
of great importance in the struggles of party and of the people ; 
and it had generally, by the force of its power, decided those 
strufroles ; but it would be absurd to think of making a law to 
regulate a power which was only to be dreaded when all law was 
at an end. As long as the rule of law continued, the power of 
London would only consist of the number of votes it had in that 



156 PARLIAMENTARY ktttfOttti. 

House. When law was at an end, the power of London would 
consist of 1,500,000 persons, and of that power there was nothing 
to deprive it. As long as regular Government existed, the metro- 
polis was, in fact, weak ; but when the course of regular Govern- 
ment was disturbed, the metropolis possessed, and could employ, a 
vast and overwhelming force. But the noble Lord proposed tha 
which would, in fact, increase the danger, for he would refuse to 
the metropolis all votes whatever. Without recurring to the 
speeches of any democratic orator, he could show the danger of 
this refusal, by proving the advantage of the concession. He 
would refer to the speech which Mr. Burke delivered on the ques- 
tion of conciliation with America. In that speech it was said by 
Mr. Burke, after referring to the dissensions that had existed in 
Wales, " A complete and not ill-proportioned Representation by 
counties and boroughs was bestowed upon Wales by Act of 
Parliament. From that moment, as by a charm, the tumults r.ub- 
sided, obedience was restored, peace, order, and civilization fol- 
lowed in the train of liberty — when the day-star of the English 
Constitution had arisen in their hearts, all was harmony within 
and without — 

"Simul alba nautis 
Stella refulsit, 
Defluit saxis agitatus humor: 
Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes: 
Et minax (qu&d sic voluere) ponto 
Unda recumbit" 

He had mentioned Madrid and Constantinople ; but London dif- 
fered from those cities in this respect, that the population of London 
had never assembled round the palace of the Sovereign, demanding 
the punishment of an obnoxious Minister. He repeated it — the 
population of London had never done this, at least in his memory, 
He had, indeed, seen the people assemble round their Sovereign, 



f AntlAMENTARY REFORM. 15* 

with the warmest expressions of a sincere attachment. The people 
of Loudon were orderly ; but exactly as he believed them to be 
more orderly than the people of Madrid or Constantinople, because 
they had better modes of expressing their opinions, so did lie 
believe, that the people of represented London would be lrvre 
quiet than the people of unrepresented London. The cause of all 
commotions in States had been, that the natural awl artificial 
powers did not correspond with each other. That had been the 
case with the governments of Greece and Italy. It was no new 
principle — it had been laid down by Aristotle — it had been main- 
tained and exemplified by Machiavel. Its effects in the earlier 
ages were well known. In the last century it had produced the 
French Revolution ; in this the cry for Reform. The danger was 
in struo:<dinor to resist that alteration which had been rendered 
necessary by the altered circumstances of the times. That dange 
this Bill was intended to rectify. It gave to the people a place in 
the government like that which they must have in society ; and 

TOM aq pUR 4 9.oURip SR 'axHlRljD JO pRO.ip piltt »^l[Sip .UDip Ul llld\]\ 

qiiAv paa.i.oR ajj 'uopoipoad .uaq} qsqduioDDtt 01 sun?d isajRa.iS am 
Snippy 9.ioa\ £JBkQ putt S mauRiu.iad aq }ou ppio.vv uorjsan£) ui.ioja^j 
aq 1 } jo maiua[was sii# %v.i\% papipa.id ipuanba.ij pwq a^isoddo 
urunapua*) -uoq arjjL i uuojay jo a.msttaui A\au r ssnasip o; suoui 
* u,o J° ^noH p^ lu - l0 J 9 H ^ { ft i° ssauisnq is.iy aq} aq 0} }i sr u \\ 
j |>a.uj-}.K>qs }i aqRiu A*aq} pjnoA\ — .lapR.ittqo %m$ jo }i aAudan 
o) ikiy aqi aq Aaqi pjno^ ' Q( \ ppioo a.insttam uttiunq A*uttSR jruij sr 
— |imiij aq o} sr os a.insRaiu sup auiRjjo} }uaiuu.iaAO{) aq} jo }aafq<> 
aq} srav i[ ^.oitqaaj jo iuoui.iRq putt uoi}Ri|iauoaa.i jo ptta}sm 
moisuass|p 'aoRad jo pi;a}sui sSuuunq-}.iRaq aonpo.id }i a>[Riu A<>q; 
P|uoa\ : .lapR.iRqo |ttqi) jo }i a.\j.idap foxy) ppiOAv '. uoi}Ri|iauoaa.i j<> 
paap }Ra.iS r aq o} }URaui srav \\i$\ siqj^ \ pa.u.*addtt }a.( pv:q auou 
a.iaq\\ uoisuassip a}Ra.iD o} iuaq} .ioj }i sr^\ [ }i q}i.\\ pa}RpossR 
jaAvod [Ronijod on a.vuq ppioijs }i 'pajsixa .iaA\od p;.m}RU }RaaS 
tt #srittoaq ^ttin 'Ars 07 }uauini>.n? sn<u}suoui }soiu r }OU }i sra\ 



iS§ Parliamentary HeforM. 

prepared to bear with man} 7 anomalies, many practical grievance^ 
rather than venture heedlessly on political alterations ; but when r 
change had become absolutely necessary, as undoubtedly it had at 
present, then his opinion was that it should be full and effectual. 
It was dangerous to change often. The Constitution was more 
injured by being frequently tampered with than by a great revolu- 
tion. If no Members were now given to the metropolitan districts, 
they would be demanded with clamour, and by that very people 
of whom the noble Marquis was so much afraid, in the first 
Session of the next Parliament. If Gentlemen believed, as they 
professed to believe, that the new Parliament would be more 
democratically inclined than the present, they must expect that it 
would not resist the demand, and that the alteration would be 
larger. The question, then, was, whether they should pass the 
Reform Bill, not without anomalies, for no measure could be 
without them, but in such a state as was sure to engender dislike 
and discontent in a large and influential body of voters. Ought 
they to frame it so as to outrage the feelings of those it professed 
to conciliate, and continue the abuses it proposed to destroy ? He 
would support the proposition to give Members to the metropolitan 
districts, not only because Members ought to be given, but because 
the majority of that House were now on their trial before the 
country, and it was for them now to prove whether they were 
sincere or not ; whether the pledge they had given in last 
October — to support the principle and the leading details of the 
Bill — was now to be redeemed. The question was not only 
whether the metropolitan districts should have eight Members or 
none, but whether they would carry the Bill or compromise it ; 
compromise that to which they had pledged themselves, in order 
to oratify those, who, finding it impossible to throw out thj Bill, 
resolved to fritter it away. He called on them, for God's sake, to 
be firm. The lion. Gentlemen who sat in that House for Ireland, 
would not sutler those who, in the last Parliament, had deprived 



PAKLIAMENTAKV KKFOKM. ]o& 

them of five Members, to flatter them into the belief that, by 
voting against this proposition, they would secure even a single 
additional Member for their country. But all the hon. Gentlemei 
who heard him, whatever district of the United Kingdom the} 
were connected with, on this occasion owed a solemn dutv to theii 
country ; as they performed that duty, the confidence which they 
had justly earned would be confirmed or lost ; and, on this occa- 
sion, it was perfectly and completely true, that lie who was not 
with them, was against them. 



1G0 



ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.* 

MARCH 19, 1832. 

On the Bill for England — third Reading. 

Mr. Macaulay said, it was unnecessary for him to declare that he 
fully concurred in the feeling which the House had expressed at 
the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman [Mr. Pemberton] 
who had just sat down, and if that hon. and learned Gentleman 
thought it necessary to apologize to the House, on account of hav- 
ing once before delivered a speech which, like that just concluded, 
met with the most enthusiastic reception, how much more neces- 
sary was it for him to offer some apology for again trespassing on 
the time of the House. He could not, however, suffer this occasion 
— the third reading of the Reform Bill — to pass over without 
coming forward once more to vindicate the principles he professed. 
The noble Lord who opened the debate, in a speech distinguished, 
like everything which fell from him, by the greatest ingenuity and 
abilitv, told the house that the first great evil of this bill was, that 
it pronounced an absolute condemnation upon our ancestors ; and 
he asked whether we were prepared utterly to condemn all which 
they had done. He certainly was not prepared to take any such 
course ; but, at the same time, he must say, that the men of the 
present day were better enabled to decide political questions than 
their ancestors. Government was not a matter of a priori reason- 
ing, and must always be determined by experiment, and it was the 
essence of every experimental science that it should be progressive- 

* g$nsard, 3d Series, vol xi. 1832, p. 450-468, 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 10] 

Moreover, it was essential that every experiment concerning 
Government should be founded on the special and peculiar circum- 
stances which called for it. Arguments, therefore, that were unan- 
swerable a thousand years ago, would be very defective if applied to 
the present day ; and he would venture to say, that there was no 
Gentleman in this House who would not be ashamed to be guided 
by ihe wisdom of our ancestors, if he were about to make an ex- 
periment on any other subject than that of Government. Take 
chemistry, botany, surgery, or any science, for example, in which 
ingenuity and invention were necessary, and there was no man in 
that House who would reject improvements in those sciences 
because they did not comport with the wisdom of our forefathers, 
or who would say that the present age, instead of being vastly 
superior to those times, was, in fact, very inferior. And why was 
that? Because these sciences depended on observation and experi- 
ment. Every age had greater opportunity for experiment than 
that which preceded it; and every age must, therefore, be con 
sidered as wiser than its predecessor. Like the other sciences he 
had mentioned, the science of Government was essentially an 
experimental science — that is, its conclusions were so wholly the 
creatures of experience, and its application so dependent upon ever- 
changing circumstances, that nought could be predicated of them 
of universal applicability. Political doctrines were not like the 
axioms and definitions of the geometer — of intrinsic truth, wholly 
uninfluenced by time and place ; their worth and force depended 
on experience, and were necessarily as changing as the circum- 
stances on which all experience was founded. This truth had 
been happily expressed by Lord Plunkett, with that noble per- 
son's characteristic force and stern precision of language. It 
was observed by him, that history not read in a philosophical 
manner was merely an old almanack. Another extraordinary doc- 
trine had been advanced with respect to the payment oi' debts by 
nations, and their manner of discharging the duties which devolve 



162 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

upon them. But lie appealed to experience — was it not a fact, 
that, among all the democratic revolutions which had been wit- 
nessed, payment of no national debt had been refused on the 
ground assigned in this argument. There had been instances, 
both in monarchies and democracies, of the payment of debts 
being refused on account of the difficulty or impossibility of paying 
them; but no such course had been pursued as that which was 
stated by the noble Lord. Look to France — look to the different 
changes which had taken place in the representative system of 
that country — look to the changes of 1815, of 181*7, of 1821, and 
of 1831, which were all constituted on entirely different principles, 
and yet, at this moment, the national credit was preserved. The 
only instance that he knew of a government refusing to discharge 
a debt on the ground that it was contracted by an illegitimate 
authority, was not the case of a democracy, but of a monarchy, 
where the government refused to pay a debt contracted under that 
very constitution which the king had sworn to maintain. The 
noble Lord also said, that the classes of men who ought not to be 
admitted into this House would be admitted by the Bill, and that 
those whom it would be desirable to admit would never be returned 
under this measure. He would again only refer to experience, and 
ask, whether that was the case in large towns which now possess 
the franchise ? The noble Lord said, that the eldest sons of Peers 
would find great difficulty in obtaining seats in that House. Lei 
him look over the lists of the sons of Peers returned for counties at 
the present time. Let the noble Lord look to Bedfordshire, Buck- 
inghamshire, Dorsetshire, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Lin- 
colnshire, Westmoreland, Devonshire, Oxfordshire, and Cheshire; 
and he would find that there were at present but few sons of Peers 
returned as the Representatives of the people. The noble Lord 
was decidedly inaccurate in one of his statements ; the noble Lord 
said, that, in the county of Northumberland this prejudice existed 
to a very great extent, and to that cause he attributed the 'Jrcun}- 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. \Q[\ 

stance of his noble friend, the under Secretary for the Colonies 
being unsuccessful in the election of 182G. The noble Lord forgot 
that it was the eldest son of a Peer who contested the election 
with him, and was returned in opposition to him. The noble Lord 
had not proved his statement, which appeared to proceed entirely 
upon assumption. There was, however, another class of men, who, 
according to the noble Lord, would be excluded by the operation 
of this Bill — those Members who had been returned by the oligar- 
chy of this House. The noble Lord thought it a hard case that 
they should be excluded, but the reason for their exclusion was 
a proper one, for they were not sent there by the people. The 
noble Lord also stated, that we had long enjoyed the blessings and 
protection of good Government, repeating that the system had 
practically worked well, and that the nation was, in fact, in a state 
of the greatest happiness and prosperity. Indeed, the hon. mem- 
ber for Oxford said, that we had attained such a state of prosperity, 
that we ought not to hazard it by making an experiment. If this 
argument proceeded on facts, he would admit that it was unan- 
swerable. The happiness of nations might be influenced by causes 
unconnected with their political institutions ; but, on the whole, 
there could be no doubt that the happiness of a people was the 
best test of the form of Government under which they lived. If 
it were proved that the House was about to destroy that constitu- 
tion under which the people of England had long enjoyed so great 
a measure of happiness as that which the hon. Gentleman described, 
it would be acting the part of madmen. But he denied that Uia 
condition of the people of England was one of unmixed prosperity ; 
and he denied that the Bill was a measure of unmixed destruction. 
When he heard it said, over and over again, that the English were 
the happiest people under the sun — when he heard this laid down 
as an undeniable proposition, which it would be unnecessary tc 
prove, and absurd to deny — he could not but feel astonished at 
Buch an argument. From the first acquaintance he had had with 



I0i PAftLtA&fitfTARY tltf£6ftik 

political affairs^ he had heard, from ail sides and from all parties, 
statements of the distressed situation of the people. Speech at'ce? 
speech from the Throne, parliamentary address after parliamen- 
tary address, had admitted the existence of great distress, express- 
ing a vain hope that it would be but temporary. He scarcely 
remembered the time in which some great interest had not been 
complaining. It was certain that the people of this country were 
by no means in a prosperous condition. The hon. Baronet, the 
member for Oakhampton, himself, has distinctly told us, that all 
the cry for Reform originated in the severe distress of the people, 
and the indifference of the House to their complaints. The hon. 
member for Aldborough, too, frequently, in glowing and energetic 
terms, set forth the miserable state of our commercial and manu- 
facturing classes, and distinctly attributed their distress to the legis- 
lative measures pursued by successive Parliaments. When the 
question of the currency, the renewal of the corn-laws, or the state 
of trade came before the House, then the country was described in 
a condition of the deepest distress, plunged into a state of absolute 
misery, a cloud was over us, our present condition was bad, but 
our future prospects were alarming. When the Reform Bill was 
under discussion, all our miseries vanished at once, the sun broke 
out, the clouds cleared away, the sky was bright, and we were the 
happiest people on the face of the earth ! If hon. Gentlemen 
wanted a large issue of small notes, our condition was again 
gloomy, but when the case of Gatton or Old Sarum was noticed, 
then we laboured under no other imperfections than the unfaithful- 
ness of our own hearts. Was it fair for hon. Gentlemen to de- 
scribe the country as in a state of the greatest misery, when they 
complained of the political economists, and to speak of our people 
as the happiest under Heaven wlieh they wished to attack the 
1 Reformers? For different opponents they had different weapons. 
The Reformers of our commercial code, they slew with the national 
distress, and with thf national prosperity they sought to annihilate 



PATiUASir.S v fAkY fcEFokM. 185 

the Reformers of the Constitution-. The real situation of the conn- 
try was midway between their extremes. There was much truth 
in both descriptions, but, at the same time, there was much fiction. 
He would, however, give his opponents their choice. If they 
ascribed to the institutions of the country the national greatness, 
let them also ascribe to those institutions al! the eviis the nation 
endured. If it was the Constitution which had improved the pub- 
lic credit, which had extended our trade — if it was the Constitution 
which had converted the barbarous hordes who once infested the- 
Seottisli borders into the finest peasantry in the world — if the Com 
stitution had improved our machinery — if we owe to the Constitu 
tion the important factories of Manchester, and the gigantic docks 
of Liverpool — we were bound, by strict reason and justice, tc 
ascribe to the Constitution, on the other hand, the heavy burthen 
o\' taxation under which the people labour, and against which they 
bad to struggle, the frequent stagnation of trade, commerce, and 
manufactures, and the dreadful and deplorable situation of those 
parts of the countrv in which the rate of wages was scarcely suffi- 
cient for the support of animal life, in which the labourer, starved 
and wretched as he is, considers the parochial rates as a fund, not for 
his occasional relief, but for his daily maintenance; in which men 
may be met harnessed to cars like beasts of burthen, and in which 
the far-spreading light of midnight tires, and the outrages of incen- 
diaries, have but too often indicated wretchedness and despair, 
starvation and daring recklessness. Hon. Gentlemen opposite 
generally content themselves with pursuing the very convenient 
course of contemplating only one side of the picture; they dwelt 
very fully on all the outward signs of our national prosperity, and 
they concluded, therefore, that the existing system must work most 
beneficially. There were also violent Reformers who had adopted 
a course directly the reverse, and who could see nothing in the 
present state of the country, but eauses For apprehension and dis- 
may. He could not agree in either of those extreme opinions 



166 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM*. 

He saw great cause for rejoicing, but also great cause for appre 
hension and dread. We had vast resources, but we had to beai 
great burthens. We had magnificent institutions, but they were sur- 
rounded by the most appalling misery, and heart-breaking famine 
and wretchedness. If he was to adopt the lesson of hon. Gentle- 
men opposite — if he was to judge of the system by its practical 
working — if he was to look at the condition of society, and pro- 
nounce upon the merits of our Constitution, he should be irresistibly 
led to this conclusion, as he saw great good alloyed by great evil, 
so in the Constitution there must be sound and just principles 
defaced by great corruptions. It was not difficult to ascertain 
which parts of the Constitution were the source of prosperity ; nor 
would it be difficult to get rid of those corruptions to which we 
must attribute our distresses. The protection which the laws give 
to the liberty and property of the subject is a great advantage 
undoubtedly, and the mere existence of a House of Commons in 
which, however defective its Constitution, there have always been 
some Members chosen by the people, and zealous for their service, 
in which the smallest minority has some weight, and grievances, if 
not redressed, can at least be exposed, is, undoubtedly, some secu- 
rity for every other advantage. To these circumstances we owe 
our prosperity — and it was proposed, by the measure then under 
discussion, to give additional protection to the subject and make 
the House of Commons more useful to the people. The distress 
which the country had suffered, and of which it had so bitterly 
complained, he must attribute to an unthrifty squandering of the 
public money — to the injudicious measures of Government — to the 
negligence of that House — to defects in the Representative system, 
which had made the House more the council of the Government 
than the defender of the people — to laws deservedly unpopular, 
more easily adopted than they could have been under the eye of 
a reformed Parliament — to laws made for the benefit of particular 
classes at the expense of the people generally — in short, he attri- 



PARLIAMENTARY REFOF.M. 1C7 

buted the distress to Ministers who had not yet been controlled by 
Parliament, and to Parliament who had not before its eyes the 
feat of the people. The noble Lord who moved the Amendment 
had argued that in no instance had that House been reluctant to 
kfc back " Ministers in measures of public economy. What ! the 
House of Commons merely backing Government who might be 
disposed to cut down useless expenditure of the public money — 
the House of Commons whose duty it was to force every Govern- 
ment to effect every reduction of the public expenditure compatible 
with the public- service. Was that a description or justification of 
the House of Commons ? The Commons ought to go before the 
Government in measures of economy, and force it to be wise. A 
reformed House of Commons would do it. But the utmost praise 
bestowed on it by the noble Lord — the negative praise of not 
being a greater spendthrift than the Government — was upon the 
House of Commons the bitterest satire. Those who supported the 
Hill were charged with loving democracy; for his part he had no 
i<lea that any species of Government was universally applicable 
There was no universal form which could be assured of goo< 
Government. He would not make institutions for all ages and all 
nations. He gave his assent to the Bill because he thought it was 
adapted to this country at present, but he should think it unsuit- 
able, because too democratic, for Hindostan, and because not demo- 
cratic enough for New York. He had no more idea that a 
Government could be called good, which was not in unison with 
the feelings, habits, and opinions of the people governed, than that a 
coat could be called good which was not suited to the size or shape 
of the person for whom it was intended. A coat that does not fit 
is a had coat, though it has been cut to suit the Apollo Belvidere. 
He <lid not support the present Bill because he thought that 
democratic institutions were best for all ages and for all countries, 
but because he thought that a more democratic constitution than 
lfl| wliich now existed in th*s country, and in our aire, would 



168 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 

produce good Government ; and because lie believed that, uncle* 
the present system of Representation, we would soon have no 
Government at all. He had never declared war with anomalies — ■ 
he had never, to quote the words of the noble Lord opposite, con- 
founded anomalies with abuses — he had never lifted up his hand 
against any anomaly, unless he saw in it a cause of misgovernment. 
He did not, therefore, support the Bill because it removed ano- 
malies, but because it eradicated real abuses, and averted dangers, 
not imaginary or remote, but palpable and near. That, lie con- 
ceived, would be the practical result of the Reform Bill. Some 
men sacrificed practical law to general doctrines ; they spoke with 
rapture of the beautiful machinery of the Constitution, but would 
not look to its practical working, nor take into consideration exist- 
ing circumstances. The Representative system, as it at present 
existed, was sa.d to be good. Be it so ; but it was good in vain, 
unless it suited the state of society for which it was intended. No 
Members of this House had advocated such arguments more 
strongly than the present opponents of this measure, when the 
propriety of giving liberal institutions to other countries had been 
under discussion. Whenever an attempt had been made to intro- 
duce into other countries our best institutions — whenever it had 
been proposed to give Spain or Naples the freedom of the Press, 
or the security of the Habeas Corpus Act, how often had it been 
said, that it was folly to legislate for those countries as if they were 
England — that what we considered tyrannical the Spaniards and 
the Neapolitans cherished as a privilege. How often has it been 
said, that it was absurd to force upon a people institutions which, 
however good in themselves, that people despise ! Was this argu- 
ment to be used only on one side, and to be invalid when applied 
to the other ? When Spain or Naples was a question, lion. Gen- 
tlemen opposite reminded the House that governments should be 
accommodated to the wishes of the people — that popular institu- 
tions could not be useful nor stable, unless thev harmonize4 with 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 16 f J 

public feeling and public opinion. But if this argument be good 
wlien applied to one description of institutions, was it not equally 
good when applied to another? Can hon. Gentlemen mention a 
greater blessing than the Habeas Corpus Act, or the trial by jury I 
No man would deny that it would have been absurd to apply these 
institutions to nations which did not value them. Would Gentle- 
men, however, say, that the existence of Old Sarum and Gatton 
was consistent with the feelings and wishes of the people? That 
was the true answer to those arguments which had been urged on 
former occasions, and which had been so eloquently advanced to- 
night by the noble Lord who opened this debate on the subject 
of prescription. Prescription was certainly advantageous to a 
Government, because it was very probable that a Government 
founded on prescription would possess a greater share of public 
respect than one which was born yesterday ; but if a Government 
did not possess the public respect, it was in no way the better for 
prescription. A man would rather have the measles than the 
eliuiera (to make use of a homely illustration), because he would 
be less likely to die of the one than of the other ; but if he must 
die of the measles, why he might as well have the cholera. If a 
government did not possess the public respect, it might as well be 
a Representative system of yesterday as of centuries back. In fact, 
there never was a great change which took away so little of what 
was really valuable as this did — which took awav so little of what 
we love and respect, or which took away so little of what was con- 
nected with our feelings and entwined around our affections. The 
Reformation and the Revolution of 1688, and the first revolution 
in France, shocked the prejudices of great masses of people. Glo- 
rious as they were, and calculated to promote the public good, 
they were certainly effected at the expense of long-cherished feel- 
ings, deep-rooted affections, and close-entwined associations ; but 
what was there of all that in the present Bill ? Did it propose to 

touch any one thing which the people esteemed, respected, or 
vol.. i. 6 



\16 PARLIAMENT AHV REFORM. 

revered? Did it take from tlie Constitution anything but those 
which Mr. Burke called its shameful parts ? Bid it endanger the 
Government of the country ? It was high time that some such 
measure as this should be introduced to preserve it, that the 
unpopular and worse parts of the Constitution should be separated 
from the good, or they would all perish together. But, however 
forcible the claims of prescription might be, the argument could 
not be justly used by the noble Lord, who had distinctly declared 
himself to be a Reformer. It was an argument which no Gentle- 
man had a right to advance, who was disposed to agree to even 
the most moderate Reform, because the smallest possible change 
equally destroyed the claim of prescription as the most extensive 
and important alteration. Prescription might, like honour, be 
compared to Prince Rupert's drops, "one part cracked, the whole 
does fly." lie appealed to the hon. Gentlemen opposite, whether 
they had not, in the debate on the question respecting the pro- 
priety of giving Members to Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield, 
asserted, that if they once began to change, there would be no end 
to it. But they had now departed from their own principle ; they 
admitted the necessity of some change, and all the arguments on 
the score of prescription must be at an end. The arguments urged 
against this Bill would apply with equal force against any plan of 
Reform whatever. A large majority of the Opposition called 
themselves Moderate Reformers ; but the objections which they 
offered to the present Bill could be applied to any measure of 
practical reform. They talked of anomalies: could any plan of 
reform be devised in which anomalies would not exist ? All reform 
must consist of disfranchisement and enfranchisement. To effect 
these objects lines must be drawn somewhere, and distinctions 
made, which would inevitably create anomalies, unless some uni- 
form system were established, and at variance with, and sweeping 
away, the whole of our present institutions. They might take 
population, or assessed taxes, or whatever test they pleased, but 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. ' ' 

there would always, as they had already seen, be mathematicians 
ready to prove that their mode of computation would produce ano- 
malies. The most symmetrical system of Representation was that 
of the United States — yet, even in that, it would be easy to point 
out anomalies. Ii, therefore, became moderate Reformers, who 
objected to the Bill on the ground of anomalies, to consider 
whether any plan of moderate Reform could be produced in which 
there would not be anomalies. Those who support any plan of 
Reform must admit one of two things ; either that the present 
system did not work well — or that, working well, it ought to be 
changed, in deference to what must be considered unreasonable 
clamour, to which they were prepared to bend. Any plan would 
also be open to the objection of not being final ; and none more sc 
than a very niggardly one. Of every plan of Reform, it might be 
said, that it was the first step to revolution. It would always afford 
an opportunity of making allusions to the scenes of the French 
revolution ; to the guillotine — to heads carried upon pikes, and aL 
the horrors of that eventful period. All these topics, however, it 
would be recollected, were brought into requisition when the only 
question before the House was, whether Manchester, Leeds, and 
Birmingham should have representatives. Most of the hon. Mem- 
bers opposite called themselves Reformers ; and he was entitled to 
demand their plan of Reform, in order that the House and country 
might see whether the objections which they had raised be appli- 
cable to the Ministerial plan alone, or be objections to which any 
plan of Reform must be liable, and such, therefore, as no person 
who called himself a Reformer was entitled to employ. That 
something must be done was admitted on all hands ; While the 
Ministerial Bill was the only plan of Reform which had been 
proposed. The hon. Member who had just sat down said that,. 
at the last election, people were compelled to vote in favour of 
candidates who supported the Reform Bill, because there was 
no other plan left before the country. They had no choice — it 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 



was this plan or none. He had a right, under these . ircumstanees, 
to call on the leaders of the hon. Members opposite to let tho 
country know what their plan was ; and he was entitled, in parti- 
cular, to make this appeal to the right hon. member for Tamworth. 
The hon. Baronet, stood at the head of a great party ; he had filled 
a high situation in the state, and might possibly fill a still higher, 
and these were circumstances which not only gave him (Mr. Ma- 
caulay) a right, but made it his duty, to make observations freely, 
but respectfully, on the public conduct of the right hon. Baronet. 
After thirteen months of discussion on the question of Reform, all 
that the House knew of the opinion of one of its most distinguished 
Members was, that he was opposed to the Ministerial plan of Re- 
form. He had, indeed, declared, that, though he would not him- 
self have brought forward, yet he would have assented to, a mea- 
sure of moderate Reform. What the plan of Reform was to which 
the right hon. Baronet would have assented — on what grounds he 
would have given his support to a measure which he thought un- 
necessary — and what were the reasons which made him to hesitate 
to bring forward such a plan himself, he had not yet explained to 
the House. The question of Reform might be a question which 
divided men's opinions, but with respect to the importance of the 
question all were agreed ; and he could not understand, on looking 
to the high character and station of the right hon. Gentleman, how 
he could shrink from the responsibility of proposing such a mea- 
sure as, in his opinion, would satisfy the country, and be less inju- 
rious in its effects than the Ministerial proposition. Yet all that 
the right hon. Gentleman had as yet said was, that he disliked the 
plan proposed by Government, and that there was a something 
which would have met with bis assent, but that Ministers had not 
hit upon that something. But let the right hon. baronet observe 
the state of the public mjrjd. the exilement which prevailed <>n 
the subject, and the delight with which the f$njsfef(al plan of Re- 

iom tod bm\ m^eti J>y ih people ; ftjjt) iUt let him ask him* 



PARLIAMENTARY* REFOUM. 173 

seJ whether he was prepared to bear the responsibility of the con- 
sciences which would follow its rejection. But the right lion. 
Baronet would doubtless say, "that is no ail'air of mine: the 
excitement is your own." [Cheers.] He supposed, from that 
cheer, that the answer was considered satisfactory by the lion. 
Gentlemen opposite. The next generation would judge them. 
When the dearest interests of the empire were at stake, the world 
would hold them responsible, not only for the evil which they had 
done, but for the good which they had omitted to do. History 
would not hold such men guiltless if they did not take enlarged 
views of the state of society ; if they did not rise to great occasions ; 
and if, when the public good required them to speak out, for fear 
of compromising themselves, they held their tongues, or spoke in 
such a wav as not to be understood; Jf an ) persons were to be hold 
responsible for the public excitement, the late Ministers had more 
to answer for than the present. But the great question was, not 
" what person is to blame,'' but " what is now to be done ?" That 
was the question before the House and the country ; and that was 
the question which he thought he had a right to ask the right lion. 
Baronet opposite. The right lion. Baronet possessed pre-eminent 
taient for debate ; but the country had a right to expect from him 
something of a higher character. The country had a right to call 
on him for his opinion of the principles upon which Reform ought 
to be founded, and of the extent to which concession should be 
made to the public wish at such a crisis as the present. He asked 
the right hon. Baronet whether he should wish it to go down to 
posterity that he, in the most eventful period of British history, 
when the dearest interests of the empire were at stake — that he. 
being one of the most distinguished members of the H use of 
Commons, brought some sound, and many specious objections 
against everything proposed by others— hinted in general terms 
tbftt something might be done, but never could be induced to 
explain what that something was ? Did the right hoo, 3aron«t 



PARLIAMENTARY RLFOKM. 



suppose that he could ever again conduct the affairs of the Govern- 
ment on Anti-reform principles? It would be madness for any 
Government, pledged to no Reform, to attempt to go on with the 
present House of Commons. They must dissolve the Parliament, 
tud appeal to the people in a moment of fearful excitement ; and 
hey would then find that they bad committed the same error 
which Charles committed when he dissolved the Short Parliament, 
and exchanged it for the Long Parliament. But supposing that 
such a Government gained more by the elections than could pos- 
sibly be expected, and supposing that they should obtain a majority 
in the House of Commons, still, he asked, what would be the case 
out of doors? The agitation which prevailed in the year 1817 
and in 1819, at the time of Queen Caroline's return to England, 
and during the latter period of the Duke of Wellington's adminis- 
tration, would seem peace and tranquillity in comparison with the 
disorder and excitement which would immediatelv spread through- 
out the country. Tumults, seditions, agitators without end, would 
arise. Agitators they had at present ; but were they disposed to 
try what would be their power under a Government hostile to 
Reform ? It was impossible to keep them down by a strong hand, 
and, if they would not have liberty, they must have licentiousness. 
Measures of coercion and security would be of no avail. Charles 
tried them against Hampden, and failed : James employed them 
against the Bishops, and failed. It was the same with Mr. Pitt, 
when he prosecuted Hardy and Home Tooke ; and the same with 
Lord Castlereagh, when he passed the Six Acts in 1819 ; and the 
same would be found by any Government which attempted to 
smother the complaints of the people of England without redress- 
ing their grievances. There was only this simple alternative — 
Reform, or anarchy. About the result he had no fear, for lis 
placed the fullest reliance in his Majesty's Ministers. " If he required 
any other pledges from them than those which he found in their 
character, he found them in ' their position. "" To abandon their 



fARUAMF.VTAnv KliPOKM. lit 

country would be to abandon themselves. They had done tha; 
which changed the character of our institutions. They had taken 
no slight step — no step that could be easily retraced, on the 1st 
of March, 1831. Before them was glory — behind them was dis- 
grace. For himself, he believed that their virtues, abilities, and 
firmness would be found equal to the momentous occasion, and 
that their names would to the latest period be inseparably asso- 
ciated with the noblest measure that ever restored to health a cor- 
rupt Government, and bound together the hearts of a divided 
people. 



ITtl 



ON THE RESIGNATION OF MINISTERS * 

May 10, 1832. 

In the course of the last eighteen months, they had often been on 
the verge of anarchy ; but, until this crisis, he had never known 
what it was to be once anxious on the subject of political affairs. 
If ever there was a time which called for the firmness, honesty, 
wisdom, or energy, of a political assembly — if ever there was a 
question in which the interest of the community was involved, that 
time was the present — that question was the question of his nobl' 
friend. Amidst all his anxiety, however, there was ample caus. 
for joy. He remembered with delight the noble conduct whicl 
that House had pursued f.-om the day they first met in that place 
up to the present mora at t; and he anticipated with confidence 
that the majority would a Ihere to that noble line of conduct which 
was indispensable to their own honour, and the safety of the con 
monweal. It was pleasing to reflect that they had still leaders to 
whom they could look up with confidence and pride, that those 
leaders were deserving of the support which they had given them, 
and who had fallen, indeed, but it was with unblemished honour. 
Amidst the dark events by which they were surrounded, there was 
this consolation — their sincerity as Statesmen had been put to the 
test, and it was not found wanting. By the voice of the people 
they were brought into power — by that voice they were supported 
in power — and they retired from power rather than betray the 
people who trusted them. They would thus carry with them to 
their retirement — and very brief he trusted it would be — the proud 

* Hansard. 3d Series, vol. xii. p. 849-857. 



tifciSki NATION Of MlNlSTKliS. 17* 

satisfaction that their conduct was fully appreciated by the people 
He did not feel bound, on the present occasion, to enter into any 
discussion on the subject of Reform, but he should address himself 
at once to the particular Motion before the House. He was sure 
that the right hon. Baronet opposite must, on a little reflection, see 
that he was wrong in asserting that that House had no right to 
interfere with the prerogative of the King in the choice of his 
Ministers. It appeared to him that there was nothing more in 
accordance with the principles of the Constitution — nothing for 
which there could not be found more numerous examples in the 
best times of our history — than the course which was now * ro* 
posed to be adopted by the House, namely, the respectfully offer- 
ing its suggestions to the Sovereign as to the choice of his Ministers. 
The appointment of his Ministers undoubtedly belonged to the 
Sovereign, but it was a clear constitutional doctrine, to which he 
did not know a single exception, that, with respect to every pre- 
rogative of the King, that House had the right respectfully to offer 
its advice and its suggestions to the Sovereign. That was a posi- 
tion, he was sure, which a person of the constitutional knowledge 
of the right hon. Baronet would not feel disposed to dispute, and 
he was equally sure that it would not be denied that, under certain 
circumstances, that House had a right to offer its advice to the 
Sovereign as to the persons whom it judged tit to fill the offices of 
his Ministers, as it had often suowsted to the Kino- the names of 
persons fit to fill offices in the Church, or fit, on account of their 
services in the army or navy, to fill any public offices under the 
Crown. He, therefore, laid down this as a position that would not 
be controverted, that the House had a right, with respect to the 
prerogative of the Sovereign in the choice of his Ministers, as with 
regard to all the other prerogatives of the Crown, to offer its 
respectful advice. He undoubtedly did understand the present 
Resolution as a recommendation to his Majesty to retain his pre- 
sent Ministers. He could not see how it could be otherwise under- 

b* 



178 fcEfifGNATtOK OF MtKtStEftfl. 

stood, for lie could not discover any other materials from which 
such a Ministry as that which they recommended to his Majestj 
could be formed. " But," said the hon. member for Thetford, " the 
Ministers had voluntarily retired fi'om office, and the House, in 
adopting* such a Resolution as this, would be advising his Majesty 
to force office on men who would not undertake it." Surely such 
a sophism was unworthy of the acute mind of that lion. Member. 
When we advise the King to take back his Ministers, we also 
advise him to take back their advice with them. That was what 
he (Mr. Macaulay) meant by the vote which he would give on this 
Motion, and he was sure it was on such an understanding that it 
would be supported by a majority of that House. Now, as to the 
objection raised to the creation of Peers, it amounted, if he under- 
stood it right, to this — that a creation of Peers, for the purpose of 
carrying a measure, even of the most vital importance, went to 
destroy the authority and weight of the House of Lords, and was, 
therefore, indefensible upon any principle of the Constitution. He 
conceived that the prerogative vested in the Crown, of creating 
Peers, for the purpose of carrying any public question, was a 
valuable and useful power, the existence of which was absolutely 
necessary, in order, on important occasions, to obviate great and 
pressing inconveniences. He believed it would be found that the 
exercise of such a power was in accordance with the principles of 
the Constitution, as laid down by the greatest constitutional 
writers on all sides and of all parties. A reference to Swift, on tlu 
one side, to Walpole and Steele on the other, and to De Lolme a?, 
a middle and impartial authority, would satisfactorily bear out that 
assertion, and would prove that the Constitution did not recognize 
any branch of the Legislature existing as the House of Lords would 
exist if this prerogative were not vested in the Crown, with uncon- 
trolled and irresponsible power. They knew that kings had fallen 
upon erroneous courses, and what had happened in the case of an 
hereditary monarchy might happen in the case of an hereditary 



RESIGNATION OF MINISTERS. 1*79 

nobility. We ha<l had a James II., and it was not beyond the 

range of possibility that we might have a House of Lords full of 
high spirit, imbued with prejudices that could not be overcome; 
and, unfortunately, opposed to the wishes and feelings of the 
people, and was there to be no means of remedying such a state 
of things ? The Constitution afforded the means of dealing with a 
factious and perverse opposition on the part of the Ilouse oFCom- 
mons, for the King could dissolve the Parliament, and appeal to 
the people, at a time when he might think that appeal would stand 
the best chance of success. Again, that Ilouse had a check upon 
the King, for it could refuse the supplies ; and was there to be no 
check at all upon the House of Lords? Was there anything in 
the Constitution of that illustrious assembly — the House of Lords 
- — which exempted it from the necessity of some similar controlling 
check ? If that power, which was subject to abuse from Kings and 
Commons, could never be abused by Dukes or Earls, the best 
course was, to leave the whole Government in the hands of so pine, 
wise, and virtuous an assembly, to abolish the Monarchy, and to 
dissolve themselves. But, if this were not the case, was it not mon 
strous to imagine that the House of Lords should be exempt from 
some check like that to which both King and Commons are sub- 
ject ? Were there no check, the only appeal of the people could 
be to physical force; but, fortunately, the Constitution affords the 
means required, by conferring on the King the prerogative of mak- 
ing Peers. He admitted that there was some danger that the 
power might be abused ; but of two dangers, he thought it proper 
to choose the least ; and when they remembered that the Ministers 
who advised the creation of Peers would be responsible for that 
advice, he thought it a power not much likely to be abused. 
Unless some one could bring in a Peerage Bill much less liable to 
objection than the Peerage Bill of Lord Sunderland, he thought 
the King's prerogative a useful oue, and one which, at this period, 
he was called upon to exert. As to impeachment, which had been 



180 RESIGNATION OF MINISTERS. 

spoken of, who would venture to impeach the Ministers for a step 
absolutely essential to the welfare o( the kingdom ? This exercisa 
of the Royal prerogative might be necessary, too, for the preserva- 
tion of the very existence of the other estates of the realm, and 
justified on grounds of the purest public policy. Let them suppose 
a case in which the two Houses were placed in direct and imme- 
diate collision by an uniform and continued difference of opinion 
on every question. Suppose the House of Lords was to be for 
war, and the House of Commons for peace — suppose the House 
of Commons to be for one Ministry, and the House of Lords for 
another — suppose, too, the struggles consequent on these differ- 
ences of opinion to be continued — suppose that they lasted through- 
out an entire Session of Parliament — suppose that they were 
found so inveterate as to be incurable even by a dissolution of 
the House of Commons — why, what, he would ask, must be the 
consequence of such a state of things? That the whole machinery 
of Government must be stopped unless his Majesty exercised his 
prerogative by giving one of the parties a predominance. The 
Government must in such a case stand still, or new Peers must be 
created. But, then, it is urged against this creation, the monstrous 
anomaly of which you would be guilty by concurring in the crea- 
tion of Peers merely to give one party an ascendancy over tho 
other on a particular question. He would ask them to look a little 
more narrowly into that question. He thought he should be able 
to show that it was a course just, reasonable, and perfectly defen- 
sible on all principles of law and of equity. If the objections were 
so strong to the creation of a large number of Peers in one dav, 
were there none to the creation of more than two hundred in jess 
than half of a century ? Suppose that one party holding power fo» 
nearly fifty years ennobled, from time to time, nearly two hundred 
of its own supporters, while all others were passed by ; suppose all 
the Peers for that period to be chosen from one faction, while all 
rank was denied to the other ; was there anything ho ro/>nstr< \usly 



RESIGNATION OF MINISTERS. 18] 

unconstitutional in that other party setting themselves right in the 
political balance, and resuming that station in the House of Lords 
to which they were entitled when they obtained the ascendancy \ 
It' it was unconstitutional tor the Whigs, when they obtained 
power, to resume that balance of influence in the House of Lords, 
of which the long tenure of office by their adversaries had deprived 
them, then the inevitable result must be, that the possession of 
political ascendancy for thirty or forty years would be a possession 
for ever. It was no longer a question of public opinion or political 
rectitude, but it must be a question of whether one party or the ■ 
other had been longest in office ; of whether Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox 
held the Premiership in 1800; or Lord Grey or Lord Liverpool 
presided over the Cabinet in 1820. The upholding of such doc- 
trines was not to be tolerated even for an instant. It would make 
the present generation the mere slaves of the past, and be utterly 
inconsistent with the first principles of politics. But the matter 
might be placed on still stronger grounds than that. Suppose tltis 
party, holding power so long, to have adhered to principles tending 
one wav, while public opinion was constantly and rapidly verging 
towards die other ; suppose the party which possessed a majority 
in the House of Lords to be devoted to a course of policy directly 
contrary to the feelings and wishes of the nation ; suppose, in fact, 
the House of Lords and the nation to have been during the whole 
of chat period moving in diverging directions ; supposing, as the 
result, an overwhelming majority in favour of the one course in the 
House of Commons, and an equally overwhelming majority in 
favour of a different course in the House of Lords ; he did not 
mean to say that this state of things was decidedly injurious to the 
Crown or to the country, or that it might not arise out of the 
working of the Constitution ; but, then, he would ask them in such 
a case to look at the situation of the Lords. The House of kords 
was not strictly a representative body, nor did he cojjten/htliht it 
should be so; but it uuik, neveitliei^, be mixed up u little witjb 



IS'2 RESIGNATION OF MINISTERS. 

the other classes of the country, and have some connection and 
affinity with, the general interests of that people from whom they 
derived their wealth and importance. Under such circumstances 
as he had attempted to describe, to add to the number of the House 
of Lords out of the great mass of the intelligence and respectability 
of the country would not impair, but, on the contrary, extend their 
influence — would not swamp, but, on the contrary, support their 
power and independence. This was his view of the condition in 
vvhich they were placed, and he saw no other course left for them 
"to adopt than by a large addition to the numbers of the House of 
Lords from the supporters of that party so long excluded from 
power, to place the Aristocracy in harmony with the other institu- 
tions of the* State. It appeared to him that everything was in 
favour of this creation — the letter of the law and the strongest 
reasons of public policy. The power of the King to exercise his 
prerogative for the purpose was undoubted; and the letter of the 
law was in harmony with the letter of the highest law of all — the 
safety of the State. He, therefore, for once concurred most cor- 
dially in the Motion of the noble Lord, and concurred with him 
also in the expressions of regret for the retirement of those who 
had supported the Reform Bill, and in his desire that none should 
be looked for as their successors who were not prepared to give that 
Bill their unqualified concurrence. If that Government, which had 
supported the Reform Bill with so much zeal and so much sincerity, 
did not return to office, then he would say the Bill was lost to the 
country. Lost, he would say, because he could not conjecture how 
those who would then have the management of it, could, even in 
a mutilated form (for mutilated it would be), consent that it should 
be carried. That the hon. Members who sat on the benches oppo- 
site should attempt to carry such a Bill seemed to him utterly 
impossible ; and, 'although one or two expressions which fell from 
them might bear the interpretation of such an intention, he could 
jiot Relieve they were spoken in earnest He would not go bacfc 



RESIGNATION Of MINISTERS. 183 

to the history of East Retford in 1829 and 1830. He would take 
a much later period. He would sptak of those who abandoned 
office not eighteen months ago — who resigned their places because 
they were hostile to all Reform whatever. He would speak of 
those who, from the 1st of March, when the first Bill was intro- 
duced, down to the final dismissal of the second Bill to the House 
of Lords, attacked all its provisions with the most inveterate hos- 
tility ■; who stigmatized all disfranchisement as robbery, and all 
enfranchisement as usurpation ; and who bellowed Universal Suf- 
frage as a means of terror into the ears of the rich, and declaimed 
about 10/. Aristocracy to the poor. It was of these hon. Members 
and their party he spoke ; and he could not think it possible that 
they would so descend as to give their support and countenance to 
the Reform Bill. He believed they had too much honesty; he 
believed they had too strong a sense of shame. The inconsistency 
of the act would be too glaring — the time was too short — the 
memory of their former professions was too recent — the motive 
would be too obvious. He could not trust himself to believe that 
the party of which he spoke could entertain an idea of supporting 
the Reform Bill. The party, then, that — if they accepted office- 
could carry the Reform Bill, would not carry it ; and there 
remained only that other party which might be disposed to attempt 
it, but who were much too powerless and insignificant to form an 
Administration. He did not mean to designate those attached to 
that party offensively, but the House probably understood that he 
alluded to those who were commonly known by the name of the 
" waverers." From that party, he apprehended, it was utterly 
impossible to select a number of men who could conduct the public 
business of the House of Commons. The case, then, stood thus : 
those who might support the Bill could not form a Government ; 
and those who could form a Government could not support the 
Bill with any regard to their public character, or with any inspect 
to political consistency, unless with the introduction of most exten- 



\Ri RESIGLVATiON OP MINISTERS. 

sj ( \e amendments. The Bill he regarded, therefore, as lost; and, 
■m the whole, he thought it better it should be lost than sufiel 
mutilation in the hands of its enemies, and be drained of that which 
they called its venom, but which he considered its life-blood. The 
Members of his side of the House had been accused of making pro- 
phecies which they accomplished themselves, and no one had been 
more subjected to these accusations than he had. They had been 
accused of prophesying the agitation which they endeavoured tc 
excite. The fault of that argument was, that it might be used at 
all times, with the same success, whenever a deliberative assembly 
was warned of the dangers which awaited its decisions. It was the 
duty, however, of those who believed such dangers existed to speak 
out, and to speak boldly. Tf they spoke for the purpose of exciting 
discontent, they were guilty of a great crime; but his conscience 
acquitted him of any such intention. He knew that he was as 
anxious as any man for the preservation of order and the security 
of property. He knew that he was prepared to contend as strongly 
against the errors of the people as to argue for their rights ; and 
he would, at all times, rather be the victim of their injustice than 
its instrument. The time, however, might come when those w r ho 
derided the warning would be sensible of its value — when those 
who laughed at the danger might witness the evils they could no 
longer avert — when those who despised all advice might feel them- 
selves bereft of all relief. The time might come when the candid 
but unpretending counsel of a Cordelia would be found preferable 
to the bold but crafty recommendations of a Goneril. Let the 
Legislature depend on those who boldly declared their opinions as 
to the danger of rejecting Reform, rather than upon the smooth- 
tongued Conservatives ; the former, he contended, were the only 
true Conservatives. He would not cry " peace, peace," when 
" there was no peace." As to those who might attempt to play 
the part of a Polignac Ministry in England, and endeavour to carry 
op the affairs of the State without public confidence, nay, in direci 



RESIGNATION OF MINISTERS. 

opposition to the sentiments of the people, he told those individual* 
that they had to do with a people more firm and determined thar 
the French, and he warned them to take care how they ventured 
on the attempt. Why, the ink was scarcely yet dry of the protests 
which noble Lords had entered against the Reform Bill. Theii 
speeches were yet ringing in the people's ears, in which they 
denounced the measure, and would they attempt to take office ? 
In attempting to administer the Government they were so eager tc 
grasp, they must either shamelessly desert the whole of their 
former protestations, or go in direct opposition to the wishes of the 
majority of that House. And, even if they could succeed in 
overcoming the majority of that House, they would still have 
dangers before them from which Mr. Pitt would have shrunk; 
and even an Earl of Strafford have hesitated to encounter. They 
would go forth to the contest with public opinion without arms 
either offensive or defensive. If they had recourse to force they 
would find it vain — if they attempted gagging Bills they would 
be derided ; in short, they would, in taking office, present a most 
miserable exhibition of impotent ambition, and appear as if they 
wished to show to the world a melancholy example of little men 
bringing a great empire to destruction. In this perilous hour he 
would call on the House of Commons to remember the hio-h mis- 
sion with which they stood charged — to remember the important 
privileges with which they were invested. Now, at the hour when 
a paltry faction, elated by a momentary triumph, were, on the one 
hand, preparing to destroy all the hopes of the people, and the 
enemies of social order, on the other hand, were rejoicing in the 
prospect of anarchy and confusion — now, at this eventful hour, ho 
implored them to rise in the grandeur of their hearts, and save a 
Sovereign misled by evil counsel — save a nobility insensible to their 
own welfare or true interests — save the country, of which they were 
the guardians, from a disastrous convulsion, and save, he would 
say ? the hive of industry, the mart of the whole world, the cent!'*) 



18G RESIGNATION OF MINISTERS. 

of -civilization— from confusion and anarchy. Their vote of that 
night would, he trusted, revive industry, and restore confidence, 
It would place out of all possibility of danger the public peace; it 
would stay political dissensions, and, by averting the calamities with 
w 7 hich they were threatened, preserve the authority of the law, and 
uphold the Majesty of the Crown. 



F~ 



18? 



ON SLAVERY IN THE COLONIES* 

Mav 24, 1832. 

After the very extensive view of this subject which has been 
taken by my hon. friend, I shall not attempt to take a general 
survey of the subjects of Negro Slavery, but merely confine myself 
to the question of the decrease of the negro population, the only 
point of all my hon. friend's argument that the member for 
Dumfries has ventured to dispute. The hon. Member has not 
contented himself with charging my hon. friend with a mis-state- 
ment, but has actually gone the length of accusing him of having 
knowingly and wilfully brought forward a system which he was, 
in his own mind, convinced was incorrect. I beg, however, to say, 
that I am, in my own mind, most entirely convinced, that the 
argument of my hon. friend is impregnable. I first say, that this 
decrease, which the hon. Gentleman attributes to the inequality of 
the sexes, is to be found in many islands where the females 
exceeded the males in number in the year 1817. I next say, that 
in St.. Christopher's, which is the island selected by the hon. 
Member himself, the women, in 1817, exceeded- the men in 
numbers. To be sure, the hon. Gentleman has talked about the 
sexes approximating in 1825 and 1826 ; but if this means anything 
it means that the women diminished in number, for it cannot be 
otherwise explained. It is true that, in Barbadoes, the black 
population has increased, which circumstance the hon. Gentleman 
may attribute to what he calls the approximation of the sexes, if 
lie pleases, but which I attribute to the cultivation of sugar being 
little practised in that island. Hut, Sir, there are some colonies in 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. xiii. p. 52-53. 



SLAVERY IN THE COLONIES. 

which the number of the men exceeds that of tho women, such 
fur instance, are Berbice, Demerara, and Trinidad ; and there w<* 
find, not only that there is a total decrease, but even a decrease in 
the number of the females. I say, that this fact reduces the 
whole matter to irresistible demonstration ; for if he be correct, 
and if the men exceed the women, the worst that could happen 
would be, that the islands would be in as bad a situation as if the 
men were reduced to the number of the women, and the two 
sexes made equal. But if we look to those colonies, we shall find 
that there is a decrease in the women as weil as in the men ; and, 
therefore, again I say, that it is clear to demonstration, that the 
decrease in the slave-population cannot arise from this ill-assort- 
ment of the sexes, as argued by the hon. Gentleman. But the 
hon. Gentleman seems to think that he has done enough when he 
has made out, as he supposes, that no decrease has taken place ; 
but I contend that, not only should there be no decrease, but that 
there should be a most rapid and striking increase. The negro 
population in the West Indies are placed in a situation admirably 
suited to their nature and disposition ; the produce of the land is 
all-prolific — the bright and vivid sky is favourable to their African 
constitutions — they Lave a great extent of rich virgin soil ready to 
pour forth its gifts, with but little labour, into their hands. This, 
therefore, ought, to them, to be the golden age of existence ; 
it ought to be their age of easy life, smiling children, and happy 
wives ; it ought to be their age of high wages, full meals, light 
work, early marriages, and numerous families. But is it so ? 
Alas, Sir, no; a blight is on them, and they drag on a weary, 
burthensome existence, darkened by despair, and uncheered by a 
single ray of hope. Let us look at the result of the same advan- 
tages in other countries. How is it in New South Wales? Thore 
the population is made up of convicts and prostitutes ; and yet, in 
spite of that deterioration — in spite of the inequality of the sexes — 
we see that colonv dajlv increasing, with every probability of these 



Bt.AVKRV IX THE COLONIES. 180 

•."onvicts becoming the patriarchs pf a mighty empire. We all 
know the origin of the United States ; we all know tnat they 
were originally peopled by the recuse of European society. And 
how is it witli them ? The population there has gone on swelling 
and swelling, like an irresistible torrent ; the people have multi- 
plied, till at length, in whole tribes, they have poured themselves 
across the mountains of Alleghany, the streams of Ohio, and the 
plains of the Arkansas. Year after year the woods and the forests, 
the fortresses of nature, have been receding before the advancing 
tide of human beings : and, year after year, mankind has shown, 
by its multiplication, that, under favourable circumstances, its 
tendency is to fulfil the immutable law of nature. Why, then, 
does not the same rule apply to those colonies? Why is all 
America teeming with life, and why are the West Indies becom- 
ing desolate? Sir, that our colonies should decrease in so rapid a 
manner is to me one of the most appalling facts in the history of 
the world. In the worst governed state of Europe — in the worst 
managed condition of society — the people still increase. Look, 
for instance, at the miserable population of Ireland — at the 
oppressed serfs of Russia — look even at the slave-population of 
America, or that of our own colonies where sugar is not cultivated. 
In the Bermudas and the Bahamas, where no suo-ar is manufac- 
tured, the population goes on increasing; but when we come to 
the sugar islands, the ordinary law of nature is inverted, and, in 
proportion to the exuberance of the soil, is the curse of suffering 
and of death. In these islands, which are subject to one eternal 
reign of terror, human life flickers and goes out like a candle in a 
mephitic atmosphere. What the Spaniards did on the continent 
for gold, we are doing in the islands for sugar. Let me remind 
the House of what Mr. Fox said' on this subjeet. No one will 
deny that, perhaps, of all our statesmen, Mr. Fox was the most 
ardent for political liberty, and yet his observation on this ques- 
tion was, that all political liberty was but as a nit-re nothing com 



105 SLAVERY TX TH12 <30L3tftfc§. 

pared with personal liberty. I shall give my best support to the 
Motion of my hon. friend. I shall do so, because I feel that this 
continued waste of life, without example and without parallel, is 
a foul blot to this country, and because I hope that the adaption 
of this Resolution mav remove it. 



191 



ON THE RUSSIAN-DUTCH LOAN.* 

julv 12, 1832. 

He could have wished that the conduct to be pursued by the gal 
lant Officer who had last addressed the House 1 , were to be the 
direct reverse to that lie had announced himself it would be, and 
that, on the vote of censure upon the Government, he should vote 
against them ; and in that respecting the violation of national 
faith, he should be with them. It was of little importance by 
whom the affairs of the countrv were administered, but it was of 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. xiv. p. 293-300. 

Note. Lord Al thorp, in moving for a Committee of the House, thus 
btated this question: — The House was aware, that in 1815 a treaty had 
heen entered into between the king of the Netherlands, England, and Rus- 
sia, and that, previously, a treaty had been concluded between Great Bri- 
tain and the king of the Netherlands to take upon themselves the payment 
of a cei tain portion of a loan due from the emperor of Russia. It was not 
now necessary to enter into that question — to inquire whether this arrange- 
ment was right or wrong; it was sufficient to consider if the treaty was 
binding in equity and honour upon this country. The agreement con 
eluded was, that the Netherlands and Great Britain should undertake t« 
pay the interest of a loan due from the emperor of Russia, at live per cent., 
together with a Sinking Fund of one per cent., until the whole loan was 
extinguished. In case of the separation between Belgium and Holland, it 
was provided that the obligation of the king of the Netherlands and Givat 
Britain ceased. This was the letter of the treaty. The separation had 
taken place. The question was, if it were such as was contemplated by the 
treaty, and if this country was absolved, in justice and honour, from paying 
its portion of the debt. He thought not The separation was not such a 
separation as was contemplated by the Treaty, which was exclusively onu 
effected by foreign force. 



192 RUSSIAN-DUTCH LOAN. 

the deepest moment that the national honour should be preserved 
inviolate. Considering, that upon this subject hung the national 
faith and honour of England, he confessed it did in the highest 
degree astonish him, that lion. Members should think of introducing 
topics which had not the slightest relation to such a subject. If 
we were bound by the solemn obligations of a mutual compact, of 
what importance to us was the general conduct of the Monarch 
with whom that compact might have been contracted ? Were we 
at full liberty to enter into as many treaties as we please with all 
the Monarchs of the world, and yet keep faith only with those whc 
proved to be merciful, liberal, and constitutional rulers ? We 
entered into treaties with the Burmese and Siamese governments, 
and were we to require of them that they should conform their 
respective principles of government to that which we conceived 
might be suitable and becoming as between them and their subjects ? 
The only argument on that side of the House was the necessity of 
keeping faith ; and how had the hon. and gallant Member met that 
argument? Why, the hon. and gallant Member talked as if we 
paid tribute to Russia, at the moment it w^as attacking Poland. 
On what ground else did he speak of economy ? To exercise 
economy in a case of this description, the payment must be op- 
tional, for he had not yet heard anybody rise in the House and say, 
that economy was to be preserved at the expense of national 
honour. If the common-sense interpretation of the treaty called 
upon this country for its execution, the hon. and gallant Member 
might as well call upon them to economize by a reduction of tho 
Th ree per Cents, or a non-pav ment of Exchequer Bills. The question 
which they were then engaged in debating, naturally divided itself 
into two parts. The first was, whether or not the country was 
bound, by the most obvious principles of public faith, to continue 
these payments ; secondly, did Government act illegally in continu- 
ing them without obtaining a new T Act of Parliament for the pur- 
pose ? AH the hon. Members who spoke upon the other side, pro 



RUSS1 AX-DUTCH LOAN. 19,7 

fessed to pursue the object of keeping these questions perfectly 
distinct ; and yet it strangely enough happened, that there was not 
one amongst them who did not mix both these topics; and that 
confusion of those questions was strikingly conspicuous where 
Vattel was referred to. Referring to the Treaty of 1815, he must 
admit, that if they examined the letter of that treaty, they would 
find, that the proviso had arisen, and that we were absolved from 
the payment of the debt. Yes, according to the letter of the treaty 
we were absolved. According to the letter we might be absolved ; 
but were they now to be told for the first time, that the foreign 
policy of this great and renowned country was to be governed by 
siK-h pettifogging rules of construction as were enunciated from the 
other side? Principles such as those were never meant, in any 
age or country, to be applied to the construction of compacts 
affecting the peace or the fate of nations. Reference, for the pur- 
poses of present argument, had been made to the opinions of 
jurists; but he knew enough of jurists to know, that they were 
i he most convenient authorities that could in anv case be referred 
U* for the purposes of such a debate as the present. In the early 
ages of the Church the Fathers were frequently quoted, and many 
of them so frequently to serve opposite ends, that it became a pro- 
verb, that you might apply to the Fathers and obtain their author- 
ity iii support of either side of almost any question. If they 
adopted the rule of literal construction, there must be an end of all 
that, had heretofore been considered the faith of treaties. lion. 
Members on the other side had spoken much and emphatically of 
the authorities which they had quoted in support of their respect- 
ive opinions; but he would call their attention to one authority 
which few amongst them would be disposed to dispute — he meant 
the authority of the Duke of Wellington. One of the great con- 
ventions to which, he was a party bore date in the same year with 
that which they were then discussing. It related to the entrance 
of the Allied Armies into Paris in the rear 181 5, By hat C 
YOU, It V 



RUSSIAN-DUTCH LOAN. 

vention it was strictly stipulated, that all public property, oth**i 
than military stores, should be respected ; and it was furthel 
agreed, that if any doubt should arise respecting the construction 
of any part of that Convention, it should be construed favourably 
to the city of Paris, yet all the pictures of the Louvre were removed. 
The people of France held up the letter of the treaty, and insisted 
that the works of art, of which Napoleon had despoiled the nations 
of Europe, should still remain within the French capital ; but they 
were restored to their original possessors, and the British nation and 
all Europe approved the act, for it was understood at the time of 
signing the Convention, that the pictures at the Louvre were to be 
restored. There was an understanding that an exception had been 
made in respect of them particularly. He was aware it might be 
alleged that the rules of construction required, that when any 
exception whatever was specified, none other could be introduced 
or added ; but let the House only look to the circumstances of 1815 
■ — look to that very Convention in which the Duke of Wellington 
himself was concerned. The treaties entered into at the period 
when what was called the Settlement of Europe had been effected, 
were directed to objects which could not, from their very nature, be 
long maintained ; but was the pecuniary part of those treaties to 
be therefore set at nought by a people calling themselves free, 
liberal, and enlightened ? The treaties of that period could cer- 
tainly accomplish no object of a permanent kind, for these Govern- 
ments thought but of other Governments, and nothing of the 
nations. In all their partitions they looked to making up compact 
states — they looked to nothing beyond the convenient frontiers 
which an acquaintance with the state supplied — they attended not 
to the national characters, habits, feelings, religion, morals of the 
several nations whose fates they presumed to decide ; and what 
better proof could be supplied of that than that very plausible but 
hollow union of Holland and Belgium ? But though, in those 
various points of policy, England Jm4 failed, \}}$t fniHir^, sq fa,! 



ftVs&tAk-bt'TclJ i.oAy. 105 

from furnishing an argument in support of breach of pecuniary 
faith, had quite an opposite tendency. He said nothing of the 
policy of that union, but it was a great and primary object of the 
then Ministry of this country to form it, and it would be an eternal 
disgrace to the present Ministers, who differed as to that measure, 
if they refused to fulfil the stipulations of their predecessors. It 
was well known, that Russia was averse from the union between 
Holland and Belgium ; and as a means of reconciling the Court 
of St. Petersburg, the payment of the Russian debt due in Holland 
was guaranteed by England [cries of " W]. He certainly under- 
stood, and believed he could show from good authority, that Russia 
was opposed to that union — it was stated at the time — he could 
show it had been recorded — it had been stated in that House, that, 
ill 1815, Russia was averse from the union ; the Treaty was con 
eluded under that view, and with the express object and intention 
of inducing Russia to accede to it; and, in order to prevent Russia 
having an interest in disturbing that union, the payments were made 
to depend upon its continuance. The period fixed for the deter- 
mination of those payments was the dissolution of the union, not 
because there was any natural connexion between the two, but 
because it was from Russia that danger was chiefly apprehended. 
If looked at in that view, the treaty was intelligible : in any other 
it had no meaning. The lion, member for Thetford said, that these 
payments were due, not to Russia but to Holland, and that Eng- 
land could onlv contemplate paying them as long as Holland had 
the ability to pay her share to Russia. But, if that were the con- 
tingency of our payments, it might have been as well made to 
depend on the fall of the next meteoric stone, or the drying ip of 
the Mediterranean. If the principle were that Russia should not 
receive the money in consequence of a separation which she could 
not prevent, or that England should be exonerated from the pay- 
ment in consequence of a separation which she had promoted, the 
treaty in which such a principle was embodied would be the *nost 



196 RuesiAN-DrTCtt ibk^. 

extraordinary that ever was made. If he understood the spirit of 
those treaties rightly, it was, that if there were the slightest reason 
to believe that Russia, by direct or indirect means, had produced a 
separation between Holland and Belgium — if she had been inclined 
to lag behind, and to make no exertion to prevent it — if she had 
favoured that separation — if she had thrown any obstruction in the 
way of any efforts we might have been inclined to make for the 
purpose of preventing that separation — then the circumstances con- 
templated by the proviso had arisen, and we were relieved from 
the payment of the money. But was that the present state of 
affairs? Was it not notorious, that since 1815 the two countries 
had, so to speak, interchanged their parts with reference to this 
question. In 1815 we were for the union and Russia was against 
it; in 1831 Russia was decidedly opposed to the separation. He 
would not say that England either caused, or was desirous of, that 
separation. lie did not mean to say, that England desired that 
the people of Belgium should be discontented with the government 
of Holland, nor that the Belgians should have risen against the 
king of Holland. He did say, however, that while the king of 
Holland continued to be, virtually, the king of that country, hosti- 
lities took place ; the resistance of the Belgians was successful ; and 
Belgium was separated, to be again united, in all probability, by 
the European powers only. England was desirous that the sepa- 
ration should be recognized, and it became necessary that the new 
independent state of Belgium should be invited to enter into the 
great European family. In the mean time, the circumstances of 
Russia had changed in a directly opposite direction. In the first 
place, as every Gentleman knew, a matrimonial alliance had, since 
1815, very closely united the Courts of Petersburg and the House 
of Orange ; but, above all, they could not help feeling, that the 
circumstances under which the Belgian revolution took place, were 
such as could not be contemplated with pleasure by a government, 
distinguished by its jealousy of all popular institutions arising <>ut 



ktTSSIAN-T)tTOH LOAN'. \§? 

of the people. IT12 forcible expulsion of the troops of the govern 
inent and the Sovereign, and a democratic council being called to 
the government of the country, the question between a republic and 
a hereditary monarchy put to the vote, and a Sovereign invited and 
elected by the people themselves, on certain constitutional terms — ■ 
these were the characteristics of the Belgian revolution ; and these 
were things which it could not be supposed the Russian govern- 
ment would contemplate with pleasure. It appeared to him. there- 
fore, that the two countries had entirely changed their former 
parts; that this recognition was now effected by the great Powers 
of Europe, and that the independence of the state of Belgium had 
not been effected in that way whieh would absolve us from our 
obligations. It had been effected, not bv the interference of Russia, 
but in conformity with the wishes of Erigdand, and in spite of a 
strong reluctance on the part of Russia. He could not but think, 
then, that we were still bound to fulfil our obligations. There was 
a case he would mention to the House, which appeared nearly 
parallel to the piesent. He remembered to have read, long ago, in 
one of the old jurists — he could not recollect where, but it was not 
necessary to mention the authority, for its great similarity to the 
present case would carry its own argument along with it — the 
writer, according to a common practice, as many hon. Gentlemen 
knew, with the jurists, put a supposed case. There were two States 
before the invention of fire-arms. Certain circumstances induced 
• •no State to agree to pay the other an annual subsidy of 1000 
ducats; the other state stipulating in return, that whenever the 
state paying this money was invaded, they would send to their 
assistance 1,000 pikemen ; and the treaty contained a stipulation 
that, if this number and the force were not sent within three days 
after such an invasion, then the payment of the annual subsidy 
should cease and be discontinued. Fire-arms were subsequently 
invented, and came into general use ; an invasion took place, the 
party invaded sent to the otic r state, not for pikemen, but for m us- 



1§8 RUSSIAN-bUtCtf LOAN. 

queteers — "For the love of heaven send us some musqueteel's 
pi kern en are of no use now " A battalion of musqueteers imme- 
diately marched to the assistance of the distressed state, and the 
invasion was repelled. Afterwards, when the subsidy was de- 
manded, the answer was, — " Look to the terms of the treaty ; it 
declares that you shall send 1,000 pikemen, and that, if you do not 
send such a force, in number and arms, as herein stipulated, pay- 
ment of our annual subsidy shall thereupon cease." Why, what 
would be the language of the Power cheated in this way ? — Would 
it not say, " You are taking advantage of your own wrong ; cir- 
cumstances have changed ; military tactics have altered ; we have 
conformed to that alteration ; by doing so we have saved you, and 
this is the return you give us for what we have done ?" These 
cases were analogous. In 1815 we were desirous of the union ; in 
] 832 we were desirous to promote a separation ; and with what 
face could the British Ministers stand up and say to the Russians, 
" You did not frustrate my wishes with respect to Belgium, you 
did not plunge all Europe into war to support your own views, and 
I will now take advantage of the separation which I promoted, and 
which you might have prevented, but did not, in order to evade 
payments which literally, though not according to the spirit of the 
treaty, were made to depend upon the continuance of the union." 
He had no difficulty, then, upon grounds such as these, broadly 
and roundly to assert, that his Majesty's Government had deserved 
well of the country, and, therefore, he paid but little attention to 
the taunts, coming from the other side, about the difficm*y that 
Members might have in facing their constituents, after voting in 
favour of a continuance of those payments. For his part, he should 
have no difficulty in defending such a vote before any constituent 
body in the empire ; for the people of England had long shown 
that they knew and felt there was a fixed identity in the state — 
that public and private morals were the same — that honesty was 
the be** policy— and they believed that to pay what they owed 



RUSSIAN-DITCH LOAN. 199 

was the truest economy — that the state could not be guilty of a 
breach of faith in one instance without bringing suspicion on all its 
engagements, and thus reducing itself to a situation at once dis- 
graceful and perilous, putting to hazard that peace throughout 
Europe now happily so long preserved — a peace, in the continuance 
of which every artisan, every ploughman, every shopkeeper, in the 
land knew that he was deeply interested ; and he need not say, 
that to preserve peace, public faith must be maintained inviolably. 
Upon these principles, Members of Parliament might go before the 
people of England — upon these principles, Members of Parliamen . 
might be willing to act, and content to suffer. 






200 



ON THE AFFAIRS OF THE COUNTRY * 

FEBRUARY 6, 1833. 

On the Address in Ansiver to the Kinxf's Speech — The Irish 
Question. 

Last night lie bad formed the intention of not taking part in the 
present debate ; but circumstances which had this evening- arisen 
determined him to adopt an opposite course, and to say a few 
words in reply to tbe attack which had been made upon him by 
his lion, friend, the member for Lincoln [Sir E. L. Bulwer] ; at 
the same time that he felt that he should quite as well discharge 
the duty which he owed to himself, and much better consult what 
was due to the House, by postponing the defence of his own per- 
sonal consistency until after he had more directly addressed him- 
self to the question which mainly occupied the attention of the 
House. His hon. friend, so ingenious in the construction of an 
argument, and so successful in making a point, was sometimes not 
always aware of the effect of the words which he used. His hon. 
friend told the House that the Government proposed coercion, 
while the hon. and learned member for Dublin [O'Connell] recom- 
mended redress. When called upon to choose between both, the 
hon. member for Lincoln declared that he could not hesitate ; but 
he was sure that, upon reflection, his hon. friend would see that he 
and the hon, and learned member for Dublin did not attach the 
same meaning to the words which the one was the first to use, 
and that the other had but too readily adopted. The hon. and 
learned member for Dublin meant Repeal of the Union — to that 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. xv. p. 250-264* 



AFFAlt'S OF TTTF: COIN IK V. 20l 

liis lion, friend was averse. When they were told that the ques- 
tion of the Union of Ireland was not to be sneered down till aftei 
the most complete investigation, till after the fullest inquiry, and 
after the gravest debate, he could not help putting* the question 
whose fault was it that they had no full and formal debate upon 
the subject \ Why was it that the question had not been fully 
agitated \ Had not his Majesty's Government given the challenge, 
and was it not fully in the recollection of the House, that the lion, 
and learned member for Dublin had addressed them for two or 
three hours — he forgot how long, for no one could consider the 
time long while that Gentleman continued speaking; but had he 
not spoken for two or three hours, without opening the question 
of the Union in a manner that could be grappled with, or indeed 
fairly encountered at all ? This was the more remarkable, as that 
hon. and learned Member had last night placed fourteen notices 
on the book, and not one of them related to the subject of the 
Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland. The hon. 
and learned Member had permitted judgment to go against him 
by default. Hon. Members at that side of the House (the Minis- 
terial) had called upon the hon. and learned Member to proceed, 
but he had declined the invitation — he shrunk back — he skulked 
away from the opportunity of giving effect in that House to the 
doctrines which he had promulgated elsewhere with so much vehe- 
mence, and accompanied with so much of personal invective and 
objurgation. If ever there was an occasion which naturally led to 
a discussion of the question of Repeal, it was the Amendment 
moved by the hon. and learned Member; but he had not only 
then neglected to take advantage of the opportunity offered to 
him, but instead of making any approach towards joining issue 
upon it, he had delivered one of the most evasive speeches that 
had ever been uttered within the walls of Parliament. From the 
beginning to the end he had most carefully and studiously avoided 
meeting the question of Repeal. He should be the last mau in 



202 APVAius t)P THE COlftfTHV. 

the world to deny that that speech was very able and eloquent, 
but though the most ample opportunity had been afforded tha 
hon. and learned Member by the occasion which then presented 
itself, to press upon the attention of the House the question of 
Repeal ; yet he had cautiously abstained from improving that 
opportunity, and had not accepted the challenge of those who 
stood strong in their defence of the Legislative Union, the Repeal 
of which was supposed by the hon. and learned member for Dub- 
lin to be the panacea for all the evils with which Ireland was 
afflicted. It was not for lack of argument that Ministers did not 
discuss the Question. They were strong in irresistible arguments, 
and feared not on any occasion to meet the advocates of Repeal, 
They were told, indeed, to wait till they had examined the petitions 
of the Irish people; but no Gentleman who took an interest in 
the affairs of the country had neglected already to make himself 
master of it in all its bearings. He was prepared to discuss the 
question of Repeal inch by inch, and to show, that so far from 
being likely to remedy the social and political grievances of Ireland, 
it would have the effect of aggravating every one of the causes of 
discontent at present in operation. If the ^ advocates of Repeal 
wished to separate the Crowns of England and Ireland — if they 
desired to establish an Hibernian Republic, their arguments might 
be considered rational and consistent ; but the hon. and learned 
Gentleman required a separation of the Legislatures of the two 
countries, and the identity of their Crowns. The hon. and learned 
Member required two independent Legislatures (for if the Legisla- 
tures were not independent, the separation was a mockery), and 
one Executive. Could it be then that a mind so acute and 
informed as his, could be unconscious that such conclusions we're 
opposed to the first principles of the science of Government i 
When a Union of the Crowns was spoken of, betook it for granted 
that no such Union was meant as that which subsisted between 
Great Britain and Hanover, in which the Crown appertained to 



AFFAIRS OF THE COINTRY. 203 

the acme Royal Personage, but in which the Ministers by wlioir 
the Executive authority was actually exercised were perfectly dis- 
tinct : a Union of that sort, so far as he knew, had nevfcr been 
advocated ; and he entertained not the slightest doubt, that could 
such a Union ever be called into existence, the first question asked 
would be, what was the use of continuing it — what purpose could 
it serve to either country ? Let the House only contemplate for a 
moment what was the nature of the Union subsisting between this 
country and Hanover. Hanover was a member of the Germanic 
Diet, and might send its contingency to the aid of a war carried 
on against the Allies of England, or against England herself. 
Did they contemplate any Union of that sort for Ireland with this 
country ? If they did, let them say so at once — let them declare 
candidly, did they, or did they not, desire two Legislatures and 
one Executive, connected as England and Hanover were, for he 
professed himself unable to understand, and he felt assured, from 
the nature of the proposition, that no man in his senses could 
imagine that he understood any other scheme by which the busi- 
ness of Government in both countries could be carried on with 
the Legislatures separated and the Crown united. But the hon. 
and learned Member said, that he thought it would be a gfre.it 
calamity if the two countries were to be separated, and were not tc 
have the same King, meaning obviously, the same Executive Govern- 
ment. The hon. and learned Gentleman then meant simply by 
the Repeal of the Union, two independent Legislatures under one 
Executive. Was such a state of things possible ? If the Execu- 
tive Power were really quite distinct from the Legislative Power, 
they might easily have two Legislatures under one Executive just 
as they had two Chancellors, and two Courts of King's Beech, 
But be the theory of the Constitution what it might, no man 
acquainted with the working of that Constitution, could for a 
moment imagine a total separation of the Legislative from the 
Executive I It would be a political anomaly, or rather a political 



204 AFFAIRS OF THE COUNTRY. 

impossibility; For himself he was disposed to rest the queuion 
upon this issue — Had or had not the Legislature a most powerful 
influence upon the Executive? Could the Crown pursue war, or 
conclude peace, without the consent, and sanction, and support of 
the Legislature? War, peace, and all the functions of the Execu- 
tive, were, in some degree, dependent upon the Legislature, and 
the Legislature exerted a considerable share of power in every 
part of the duties assigned to the Executive. The King might 
choose his own Ministers; but he could not maintain them it? 
office after Parliament had become hostile to them. The conduct 
of negotiations was intrusted to the Monarch, lie appointed Ambas- 
sadors ; but the King could not pursue any line of foreign policy 
in opposition to the views and feelings of the Parliament. The 
Kepealers might, therefore, be refuted out of their own mouths. 
They said, that the Executive Power ought to be one : but the 
Legislature bad a share of Executive Power. Therefore, by the 
confession of the Repealers themselves, the Legislature ought to be 
one. Now the futility of such an opinion could be at once 
exposed by a most simple, obvious, and familiar illustration. Sup- 
pose the one Legislature voted an Address in favour of peace, and 
the other declared for war, what would ensue ? Did they suppose 
that there were to be at all foreign states with which we main- 
tained diplomatic relations two Ambassadors — one for England 
and the other for Ireland ? And yet it was impossible to avoid 
arriving at that conclusion if a distinction were established between 
the Legislative, and therefore, of necessity, between the Executive 
powers of the two countries. And what would be the next step ? 
Negotiations might be carried on with foreign states, and the Legis- 
lature of this country express the highest approbation of the man- 
ner in which they might Lave been conducted — might declare its 
confidence in, and offer its thanks to the diplomatic agent employed ; 
while the Legislature of the other State might resolve upon his 
impeachment, J^ot ten — not five years would elapse before ocea« 



AFFAIRS OF THE COUNTRY. 205 

sions iiiust present themselves, out of which causes of irreconcile- 
HDle-dispute must arise. Not one year could the two countries 
exist under the same Imperial Executive. The supposition was 
monstrous and absurd, and all history showed that the plan would 
be utterly impracticable. It had been supposed that parallel cases 
should be referred to; but when those came to be examined, it 
would, in every instance, be seen, that a similarity of circumstances 
did not prevail ; and that where they did, the case but strength- 
ened the position for which he was contending. Take the case of 
Ireland herself during- the short period in which she possessed ar 
independent Parliament. It was only during eighteen years thai 
there did exist in the British empire two independent and co-equal 
Legislatures ; and though the circumstances under which they sc 
existed rendered collision exceedingly difficult — for during the 
whole of that period, as was well known to all who heard him, 
the Irish Houses were managed by that Parliamentary corruption 
which no one could desire to see renewed, and the Irish people 
were overawed by a large military force — yet, for all that, so filled 
was the system with the seeds of disunion, that six years did not 
elapse from the declaration of independence till occasion fur a dif- 
ference of opinion arose. In the year 1*788, George 3rd was 
incapacitated by illness from the exercise of the powers appertain- 
ing to the Kingly office, and according to the Constitution, the 
privilege devolved upon Parliament of making provision for the 
discharge of those high and important functions. What occurred ? 
The Parliament of England offered the Regency to the Prince of 
Wales with extensive restrictions — the Parliament of Ireland offered 
him the same powers without any restrictions whatever. Surely 
if they possessed the right and the power to make such oiler 
respecting the conditions upon which the Royal functions were to 
be exercised, they possessed as fully and could as freely exercise 
the privilege of selecting the individual to whom the appointment 
might be offered, and with quite m strong a claim of right cou^ti- 



AFFAItIS OF THE COUNTRY. 

tute the Duke of York Regent, as extend the powers of the office 
when vested in the Prince of Wales. They might have chosen 
their own Regent, and might have invested him with such powers 
as they thought proper ; and had George 3rd continued for the 
remainder of his life incapable of the duties of Monarch, England 
and Ireland would have been for thirty-two years with a divided 
Executive, without departing one iota from the principles of the 
Constitution. This would have been the unavoidable consequence : 
yet it was loudly deprecated in the very same breath which sent 
forth a warm recommendation to call into life and activity the 
causes from which that consequence must necessarily flow. Were 
he to pursue the argument further, he could occupy the attention 
of the House with nothing more than reciting such a series of 
monstrous results, as certainly never before ensued, and which 
were probably never yet contemplated in reference to any public 
measure. Not only was all argument opposed to it a priori, but 
all history would show the scheme to be founded upon a gross 
and pernicious fallacy. They might have again a legislature in 
Dublin and in London as they had before 1*782, but all that the 
former would have to do, would "be to obey the decrees of the 
latter under a mock form of independence. He admitted that some 
crises bore the appearances of divided legislatures and united 
Crowns, but those appearances were to the utmost degree decep- 
tive, and the more closely they were examined the more clearly 
did that character develope itself. Such was the case, for example, 
in the co-existent parliaments of France, Burgundy, and Brittany; 
and, equally so, in those mockeries of the names of Parliament 
with which the House of Austria still amused the people of Hun- 
gary and the Tyrol, In all these eases there was no such thins: as 
an independent legislature ; all the power lay in the hands of the 
Crown ; the Parliament was a mere pageant— a mockery — or 
means of riveting the, fetters of tin? conquered. In fact, if history 

bad om kmgn winch motl out, morg emphatically than an< ther, 



AFFAJKS OF TttB COUNTHV. 207 

— -It was that which, indeed, reason would strike out for itself, tin 
impossibility of two independent legislatures co-existing under tli€ 
same executive head. It was not easy to get at the precise plan 
of Repeal contemplated by the learned Member for Dublin. lie 
had not himself developed it, and it was only- to be guessed at by 
some partial revelations. Among a number of statements of the 
learned Gentleman on this head, which he had read in the public 
Journals, the most precise plan was one proposing a kind of federal 
union of a local legislature sitting in Dublin, with an imperial 
legislature in London. But did the learned Gentleman deceive 
himself so much as to suppose, that by this plan he evaded the 
difficulties of two independent legislatures ? Supposing, as in the 
latter case, that there should spring up some difference of opinion 
or conduct between the two legislatures — the domestic and the 
imperial — who was to decide between them ? Where was the 
paramount authority to declare, " you are right," and " you are 
wrong; you therefore must yield, (fee. ;" for on the supposition of 
the learned Gentleman, they were both to be independent and 
supreme. A dispute between the House of Commons and the 
House of Lords was bad enough ; yet in that case the Crown pos- 
sessed a constitutional power, which in practice had prevented 
collisions between the hereditary and the representative branches 
of the Legislature ; it could dissolve the one, — it could add to tli€ 
numbers of the other. They all knew that both expedients were 
had recourse to in the reign of Anne, in 1704 and 1712 ; in the one 
instance (the Aylesbury affair) the Queen dissolved the House of 
Commons ; in the other (the question of the peace of Utrecht) she 
created a number of Peers. But who was to arbitrate between 
two independent Legislatures elected by two different nations ? The 
federal union of a domestic and an imperial legislature, did not 
meet the difficulty which, indeed, the greatest federal republic in 
the world was at this moment exhibiting on a large scale. That 
republic — the most famed in the world — agreed to its prese it 



AFFAIRS OF tkE COUfctfltt. 

constitution in a great convention, over which the genius > 
Washington presided, and in which the most able statesmen «f 
the day assisted. At that memorable convention, the different 
stages of which the republic was composed agreed to a form of 
union, similar to that contemplated by the lion, and learned Gen- 
tleman ; and yet, after more than half a century's trial, the consti- 
tution, of the United States had found no other arbiter between a 
local and an imperial legislature, but physical force. The hon. 
and learned gentleman's plan for separating the legislatures of th: 
two countries, and at the same time continuing the union of th 
Crowns, was, therefore, worse than a complete and total separa 
tion — that complete and total separation which the hon. anc 
learned Gentleman said he should regard as a calamity ; but which 
would be no calamity compared with that which he proposed tc 
put upon us. If, on a fair trial, it were found that the two coun- 
tries could not be made to co-exist in the same empire — could not 
be made harmoniously to combine in one course of mutual support 
and prosperity — ir, God's name let them be wholly separated. He 
did not wish to see them, like those strange twin beings lately 
exhibited in this city, connected by an unnatural tie, which made 
each the plague of the existence of the other — each in the other's 
way; more slow of motion, because they had more legs; more 
helpless, because they had more hands ; partaking of no common 
aliment, sympathizing only in disease and helplessness, and each 
being perpetually subject to perish by the dissolution of the other. 
And, now, in what character was it that the hon. and learned Gen- 
tleman came forward? He said that he appeared as the la^t 
advocate of his own country — as the man who stood between the 
empire and civil war. But if they admitted that the Repeal of 
the Union was to save us fiom this calamity, what argument had 
the hon. and learned Member advanced in favour of that proposn 
tion? He had recounted many grievances; and he was not the 
man to speak lightly of those grievances — they were, undoubted] y f 



AFFAIRS OF Tttfi C'OL'NTUV. 

li timer ous, extensive, and of long standing; but when he heard 
the hon. and learned Gentleman go through that melancholy list 
of evils, many of which, unquestionably, required a speedy remedy 
— a remedy which he trusted soon to see applied — (at least so far 
as any remedy might be within the gift of the Legislature), when 
he heard the hon. and learned gentleman go through that melan- 
choly list, he detected one alone which, as it seemed to him, the 
Repeal of the Union could, even in the hon. and learned Gentle- 
man's own opinion, tend to remove. What was the nature of the 
evils to which the hon. and learned Gentleman alluded — were they 
such as did not exist previous to the Union ? Certainly not ; and 
he had yet to learn that the Repeal of the Union would be a 
remedy for grievances which existed long before that Union took 
place, and which grievances, he would confidently venture to add, 
a Repeal of that Union would but aggravate. The learned Gen- 
tleman, in his post hoc and propter hoc distinctions, seemed t<r 
reverse the well-known logic of the Goodwin Sands versus Tenter 
den Steeple. The steeple was the cause of the sands, said the rustic 
logicians, because it existed before they encroached upon the coast ; 
but the learned Gentleman reversed the reasoning, and said, 
because the Union took place long after the existence of certain 
grievances, therefore it must be the cause of them. Some of the 
grievances which he thus ascribed to the Act of Union were not 
peculiar to Ireland, or to any form of government. For what did 
they reform the House of Commons? Was it not on the same 
grounds upon which the hon. and learned Member now came for- 
ward and asked for a Repeal of the Union ? Was not the removal 
of many of them — undeserving sinecurists, political judges, cor- 
rupt magistrates, for example — one of the great objects of the 
Reform Bill ? Surely, the removal of the remaining Irish griev- 
ances did not in all fairness require a domestic legislature in Ireland. 
Besides, see to what the argument tended ; if local abuses in 
Ireland required a loe;d legislature to remedy them, why should 



*2 1 AFb'AlUS Of Tttfi COUNTRY. 

not every other part of the empire, also complaining of grievances 
be allowed its domestic legislature ? They ail remembered what 
complaints were made a few years since with respect to the Welsh 
Judges ; but did anybody, therefore, dream that Wales should be 
separated from England, and that it should have a domestic legis- 
lature of its own? In the same way he never heard it said that a 
domestic legislature should be established in Cornwall because 
there were several local grievances in that county which required 
a remedy. Nay, to come nearer his political home — Leeds — he 
could assure the House, that a large majority of his constituents 
complained loudly of the grievances imposed upon them by its 
corporation ; but not a hint had been thrown out that the best 
remedy would be the establishing a nice federal independent 
domestic legislature in the West Riding of Yorkshire. And yet, 
if the learned Gentleman's project were good for anything, it must 
be capable of being applied to Wales, and Cornwall, and York- 
shire, and every county in England, as well as to Ireland. He 
would go further (perhaps the learned Gentleman would say much 
further), and maintain that the clearest ground which could be 
guessed at, as the basis of his repeal scheme, would apply a for- 
tiori to a separation of the legislatures of the north and the south 
of Ireland. It a rooted difference of religion, and the existence of 
the worst consequences of that difference, would justify the separa- 
tion of the English and Irish legislatures, the same difference, and, 
still more, the same baleful consequences, would warrant the sepa- 
ration of Protestant Ulster from Catholic Minister. If, as the 
learned gentleman had often declared, it was impossible for a 
Catholic prosecutor or prosecuted to obtain even the semblance of 
justice from an Orange juryman, and that such a state of things 
would be a justification of a Repeal of the Legislative Union 
between England and Ireland (though the fact was notorious thai 
no such conduct would, under any circumstances, be manifested 
lo wards any British subject in England), why then the same rev 



AFFAIRS OF THE COUNTRY. 211 

Boning, that only a domestic legislature could remedy .1 domestic 
grievance, would in a tenfold degree apply in favour of one 
domestic legislature in Dublin, and another in Deny, or some 
other large town in the north of Ireland. All the arguments 
which the hon. and learned Gentleman had advanced in favour of 
his favourite scheme of Repeal seemed invalid. In making these 
observations, he had, in a great measure, vindicated himself from 
the charge of inconsistency brought against him bv his hon. 
friend, the member for Lincoln. It was very easy for hon. Gentle- 
men to come forward with a speech made by another, upon the 
Reform Bill, to read a few sentences from it, and to say : "this 
binds you to support a Repeal of the Union." It was hardly fair 
to take such a course, because every expression uttered in the 
House ought to be construed only in reference to the occasion upon 
which it had been used. No man knew better than a practised 
writer like the hon. member for Lincoln, that the whole force or 
wisdom of words depended on their application ; that nothing was 
easier than to write a theory on either side of a subject, either ail 
panegyric or all vituperation ; and that the wisdom or folly of the 
theory depended solely on its application. For example, were he 
to defend Thistlewood in the tone and language which he should, 
or at least ought to employ, if he were the advocate of a Lord 
William Russell, or an Algernon Sydney, it would be plain that 
he should be employing words, to say the least, inappositely. The 
whole test of the propriety is the application— the appositeness of 
the expressions at the time ; and by these considerations he ought, 
in fairness, to have been judged by his hon. friend, the member 
for Lincoln. He believed the Reform Bill to be a remedy which 
might be easily applied for the removal of the greater portion of 
the evils complained of by the hon. and learned member for 
Dublin. He believed that the project for the Repeal of the Union 
was a mere delusion ; nay more, he believed that, in the manner 
in which it was proposed, it was an impossibility, lie believed 



-*2 AFFAIRS OF THE COUNTRY. 

also that if it were practicable, there was no part of the empire to 
v, inch it would be so fatally ruinous as to Ireland itself. The 
expressions which he used on the occasion alluded to by the lion. 
member for Lincoln, and which he did not shrink from, imputed 
much, perhaps nine-tenths, of the grievances and ills which 
afflicted the country previous to the passing of the Reform Bill, 
to the misgovernment consequent upon a withholding of tmit 
beneficial measure. But it should be recollected, in applying his 
language to the case of Ireland, that he did not, therefore, argue 
that the breaches of the law to which these consequences of mis- 
government led, should go unpunished. When he said that in 
his mind the burnings and destruction of agricultural produce, 
which disgraced so many portions of England, we're mainly owing 
to the then Ministers turning a deaf ear to the people's cry for 
Reform, he did not at the same time contend, that the incendiaries 
and the lawless disturbers of social order should not be hanged or 
otherwise punished. Then, though he earnestly deplored the 
probable results of rejecting the Reform Bill, he did not assert 
that the outrages and excesses committed under the name of that 
rejection should pass with impunity — that for the Bristol rioters, 
for example, the sword of justice should not be unsheathed — but 
he would defend the consistency of his language, on that and the 
present occasion, out of the mouth of the learned member for 
Dublin himself. That learned Gentleman told the House yester- 
day, that the coercers might goad by their harsh policy, some of 
the least prudent, least thinking multitude, into a general war 
against property and order, but that then he should be found in the 
ranks of the Executive in resisting the outrages, and punishing 
<he guilty. The learned Gentleman, it was true, said that he 
would thus join the ranks of the Government as the lesser of two 
great evils — that while he aided it. he would abuse and execrate it 
as the parent source of all the mischief — but still he would be found 
in its ranks, If, therefore, the learned Gentleman did not 'eera 



AFFAIRS OF TIIE COUNTRY. 213 

himself inconsistent, when aiding in the case he put to check the 
lawless consequences of grievances which he called upon the 
Hones to remedy, he was at least as little obnoxious to a similar 
charge by his lion, friend, the member for Lincoln. The lion 
Gentleman and he agreed in aseribing to inisgovernment the real 
parentage of the grievances which had led, or might lead, to acts 
inconsistent with social order ; and both of them agreed, that 
while the grievances should be remedied, the violation of the law 
should be punished. The only difference between them was one 
of time — that was, when the law should be enforced against its 
transgressors, lie agreed with the learned Gentleman, that Ireland 
presented many grievances which demanded a remedy from the 
Legislature. He, for one, would do his best to redress those 
grievances. He would go further, and declare he would not belong, 
for a moment, to any Government to which that redress should be 
a matter of unnecessary delay. Rut because 'he was thus ready 
to redress the grievances of Ireland, was he, in the mean time, to 
see the law outraged — nay, despised by a furious and misguided 
multitude? Talk of the distribution of Church propertv in a 
country in which no property was respected, and were they to be 
told that, to enforce the law against the robber, and the murderer, 
and the incendiary, was to drive an injured people into civil war? 
Did they who talked thus wildly recollect the present deplorable 
state of Ireland ? Did they recollect that, in one county alone, 
according to the authority of the right hon. Secretary for Ireland, 
not less than sixty murders, or attempts at murder, had been per- 
petrated in comparatively a few weeks, and not less than 600 
burglaries, or attempts at burglary ? Why this w^as far worse 
than civil war. A loss of life and property equal to the sacking 
of three or four towns. • Civil war, indeed ! he declared solemnlv 
that he would rather live in the midst of any civil wars he had 
ever read of, than live in some parts of Ireland at this time. Much 
ratiier would he have lived on the line of the Pretender's march 



214 AFFAIRS OF THE COUNTRY. 

at Carlisle or at Preston, than now live in some of the districts ol 
Ireland in which burglary and murder were the nightly occupa 
tions. In point of fact, to threaten civil war w; s only to threaten 
lhat which was now suffered, for Ireland was in a state of civil 
war. And yet, to endeavour to put an end to such a disgraceful 
scene of anarchy and strife was, forsooth, " brutally" to coerce 
Ireland. lie repeated that the civil war had long since begun, 
and, if not checked, must end in the ruin of the empire. In the 
course of the remarks with which he had thus troubled the House, 
he had avoided all allusion to those irritating topics connected with 
the vituperations which the hon. and learned member for Dublin 
had, more than once, thought it fitting to pour out against the 
party now in office. That party would spare itself the task of 
reproaching him with conduct, to say the least, savouring of ingra- 
titude. The hon. and learned Gentleman might be assured that 
his abuse was not a bit more stinging to those against whom it 
was directed, than that which was so lavishly bestowed upon them 
by those who so long withheld from him and his Catholic 
brethren their political rights, and who were now allied with him 
in hostility against those very persons who were ever the earnest 
and uncompromising advocates of those rights. He might be 
assured that the high-minded men who braved the " no Popery" 
cry in all its fury, were not likely to be scared by a cry for the 
Repeal of the Union. As attached to that party known by the 
name of '.' the Whigs," it was not for him to speak of their claims 
upon the favour of an enlightened public. The time would come, 
when history would do them justice, and would show, among 
other things not unworthy of commendation, how much they had 
done and suffered for Ireland ; it would show that, in 180?, thev 
left office because they could not knock off the political fetters of 
their Catholic fellow-subjects ; and that, for the same s.icred c»use. 
they remained upwards of twenty years out of office, though mon, 
than once it was within their grasp, braving at the same time x ,h* 



AFFAIRS OF THE COt'KTttt. 

frowns of the court and the hisses of the multitude. Yes, for tLe 
Catholics they renounced power and place, without obtaining ir 
return the poor reward of a fleeting- popularity. These were men # 
in those days of " no Popery" triumph, who might, by uttering 
one little word against the Catholics — nay, in some places, by 
merely not saying a little word in favour of them, have been 
returned by numerous constituencies to a seat in the Legislature ; 
but who, sooner than utter that little word, contrary to their well- 
founded convictions of right and justice, were not only excluded 
from Parliament, but from all those places of honour and trust 
which are coveted by every high-minded English gentleman ! 
The Whigs retired from public lite, but their honour was unsullied. 
The clamour, therefore, which the hon. and learned member for 
Dublin was endeavouring to excite against Earl Grev's Government 
could not be of much moment, compared with that which Ea ' 
Grey had already withstood in order to place the learned Gen tie- 
man where he sat. Though a comparatively young member 01 
the Whig party, he could take it upon him to speak their senti- 
ments on this head. He therefore could tell the hon. and learned 
Gentleman that the same spirit and moral courage which sustained 
me Whigs when out of office, in their conflict with bad laws, 
would sustain them in office in their conflict with the enemies of 
good laws. They were not deterred by clamour from making the 
learned Gentleman not less than a British subject ; he might be 
assured they would never suffer him to be more. In saying this, 
he believed that he was speaking the sentiments of many thousands. 
He was proud to say that he stood there, for the first time, the 
Representative of a new, a great, and a flourishing community, 
who conceived that, at the present time, the service of the people 
was not incompatible with that of the Crown; and who had sent 
him there, charged (as the words of his Majesty's writ expressed 
it), "to do and consent to such things as should be proposed in 
die great council of the kingdom." In their name, therefore, he 



216 AFFAIRS OF THF, COtKTfcr. 

hereby gave his full assent to that part of the Address wherein th« 
House declared its resolution to maintain, by the help of God, th€ 
connexion between End and and Ireland inviolate, and to intrust 
to the Sovereign such powers as might be necessary for the security 
of property, for the maintenance of order, and for preserving, 
entire, the integrity of the empire. 



217 



THE DISTURBANCES (IRELAND) BILL.* 

feb. 28, 1833. 

He confessed, that the apprehensions entertained by the lion, and 
learned Gentleman who had just sat down [Mr. Shell] did not 
appear to him to be in any degree well-grounded, nor did he think 
that the speech of that lion, and learned Gentleman, however much 
it had been cheered at that side of the House, would at all weaken 
the lasting impression made by the admirable address delivered 
by his right hon. friend (Mr. Stanley) yesterday evening. That 
speech had produced an impression which he was convinced would 
not easily be removed from the minds of those who heard it. 
Tim lion, and learned Gentleman had told them, that that speech, 
great as he admitted it to be, owed much of its force to the pre- 
possessions of the majority in that House. According to the lion, 
and learned Gentleman, it would appear that English members 
were eager to find an excuse for exposing Ireland to the operation 
of this measure. For himself and for those who concurred with 
him in opinion as to the necessity of the measure, he begged most 
distinctly and positively to repudiate the charge. That English- 
men were anxious for some excuse to put their feiiow-subjeets. of 
Ireland out of the pale of the Constitution was, he must, in jus- 
tice to himself and other English members, say, altogether un- 
founded. For his own part, he had never risen in that House 
under more painful feelings than those which now oppressed him. 
He had never thought, that it would have become necessarv foj 
him to stand up and defend the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, 

* Hansard, 3d series, Vol. xv. p. 1326-IS37» 



218 DISTURBANCES (iUKI.ANd) BILL. 

and the suspension of the trial by jury. But on what grounds 
did he defend that course ? Before he went to those grounds, he 
would begin by saying, that he entertained no feelings with respect 
to the rights and liberties, and prosperity of England, which he 
did not hold as fully and as strongly in regard to those of Ireland, 
lie thought there was no situation in the life of a public man 
more painful than that in which he found himself, under the 
necessity of supporting the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act 
and even the temporary abolition of the trial by jury. These 
were sacred portions of our Constitution, older than Parliament 
itself — their origin was lost in the darkness of ancient times, they 
were beyond the Heptarchy ; they formed parts of the great 
charter of British liberties ; they were those great bulwarks of 
freedom for which our ancestors had bravely and successfully 
struggled — to preserve which kings had been deposed, dynas- 
ties had been changed — for which a noble army of martyrs had 
bled. He touched those sacred bulwarks with trembling and awe. 
Never oujdit thev to be touched or disturbed but in case of the 
greatest necessity ; but that necessity onee made out, he would not 
stop to inquire, how far or how short he was to go bevond them. 
He would not — having once admitted the principle — enter into 
the details, for they must be granted, in order that the application 
of the principle might not be in vain. lie could imagine nothing 
worse than the enactment of a measure which, being unconstitu- 
tional, should, at the same time, be ineffectual, which, while it 
went beyond the law, did not afford any security for the briefness 
of its own duration. In departing from the law, he would raUier 
err on the side of vigour than of lenity. He would therefore 
adopt a strong measure, that its duration might be short, and that 
it might be less liable to be drawn into a precedent. When once, 
theretbre, he had made up his mind that a suspension of the 
Habeas Corpus and of the trial by jury had become necessary, it 
w$$ f.o Iiim of little importance to go into discussion as to 4§!$il& 



fotSTt'RBANCES (irkland) Bttt. 21 

and in that feeling he would not inquire which would be the best 
substitute for the trial by jury — the trial by one judge, or by three 
barristers, or by courts-martial — for though he was not without an 
opinion as to which was the best, he would not stop to choose 
between them, but as he had mentioned them, he must say that, in 
his opinion, any of them would be preferable to that substitute 
suggested bv the hon.and learned Gentleman who had just addressed 
the House. That the lion, and learned Gentleman seemed to think, 
that the trials under the Bill before them ought to be by a jury, 
but a jury chosen from the aristocracy. Now, it seemed to be 
generally admitted, at least he had not yet heard any hon. member 
who controverted the opinion, that the very worst hands to which 
the administration of strong measures like the present could be 
confided, were the local gentry or magistracy. Yet, to something 
like this, to a sort of special jury of the aristocracy, would the 
hon. and learned member confide the administration of these 
strong measures. He would have a jury of the Protestant gentry 
to try the Catholic peasantry. Could anything be more likely to 
create irritation, when the passions and prejudices and supersti- 
tions of the great mass of the people would be opposed to it ? 
Was that the course which the hon. and learned member would 
adopt ? But how, then, could a jury of the aristocracy be 
formed, without incurring the objection that seemed so generally 
to prevail as to the unfitness of the local gentry to administer strong 
measures ? Let him, without going further into details, which, he 
repeated, he looked upon as of minor importance, if the necessity 
for the principle was made out — let him ask, was that necessity 
proved to exist? He thought it was. The question of that neces- 
sity was divided into two great parts. There was predial agitation 
and political agitation. Was any doubt entertained of the exist- 
ence of the former ? Could anything be more appalling than the 
details which were received, and some of which the House had 
heard, as to the meetings and outrages of the peasantry ? Well, 



220 MSTURBANCES (iRKLAND) BILL. 

but if was said, " pat a stop to that," and he thought he had 
heard it said, let it be enacted that any man in the disturbed dis- 
tricts who was found from his home after eight o'clock at night, 
should be liable to the punishment, not only of a misdemeanour, 
but a felony. ["No, no " from Mr. O 1 ConnelL] If his ears hao 
not deceived him, that was said, and there were many near him 
who were under the same impression. But, perhaps, there had 
been some words said very like them in sound, though differing in 
sense, as in another case, which must still be fresh in the recollec- 
tion of the House. He thought that something of the kind was 
said at the time when a threat was intimated of vengeance to be 
taken for Ireland by the mob of St. Giles's. To him it appeared 
to be incontrovertibly proved, that predial agitation existed, and it 
was closely connected with political agitation. He did not rest on 
the anecdotes which he had heard on the subject, though some 
of them were of great importance as showing the opinions of the 
great mass of the people. He did not take this proof from the 
ballads on which the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Sheil) had 
commented ; yet, from circumstances sucli as these, trifling as they 
might at first appear, the signs of the times might often be col- 
lected. Such things were, as Lord Bacon said, like straws which, 
thrown up, showed which way the wind blew. Taking the whole 
of what he had heard, he could not refuse his belief to the facts, 
nor could he avoid coming to the conclusion, that there was a 
close connexion between predial and political agitation. A like- 
ness existed both in feature and in principle, and the principle of 
each was evidently one and the same — that of preventing peaceable 
inhabitants from beinor Rival to their Kino\ and obevinjr the laws 
of their country. Both were founded on intimidation. The 
■Whitefeet threatened, and put their own threat into execution ; the 
political agitators also held out their threats, and in doine; so 
usurped a power which no subject had a right to. There was an 
active and a passive resistance to the law. That the active was 



DISTURBANCES (IRELAND) BfLl. 2'ji 

Jnlawful no man would pretend to deny ; that the passive resist 
ance — that which directed or recommended men n )t t<> deal with 
other men of certain political opinions — not to buy from or sell t<: 
them, was also unlawful ; he would assert ; and he w as satisfied 
that the hon. and learned member for Dublin would, not stake (lis 
legal reputation on the assertion that it was otherwise, lint there 
were other modes of intimidation. What were those district courts 
which were recommended, and to which men were told to refer 
their differences ? What were those but so many sources of inti- 
midation, bv which those who should refuse to conform to them 
were to be held up to public odium I What was thai organization 
of an unarmed body, which might be armed ? Were not all these 
so many means of intimidation ? They had heard in that House 
of declarations against the Whitefeet, of disavowals of their acts; 
no doubt, most, if not all, of their acts were such as no man had 
yet the hardihood to defend. But was there no use in keeping up 
excitement just below crime, and amongst those who were just 
above die vilest criminals? Was such agitation not of some bench*'. 
to those who made a profit of it, and could they be otherwise than 
desirous that it should be kept up just below that point where it 
excited the disgust and the horror of all reasonable men I Some 
men turned agitation into a lucrative trade, and it was of use to 
those who could turn it to a profitable account. But why, he would 
ask, declaim so strongly against the predial agitation by the White- 
feet and others, when the} who so declaimed, kept up an agitation, 
of a different kind as to the means it was true, but much alike in 
the tendency ? Suppose one of those Whitefeet brought before an 
association of agitators of a different kind, and asked to account 
for his conduct, what would be his natural answer ? " Yon," he 
would say, "agitate, so do 1; you pursue one course, I another; 
vou intimidate, so do [; but though the execution of my threats 
is more immediate, it is not more certain than that »f yours in the 
result. You speak of your unarmed volunteers, so have I mine* 



22$ fttSTLRBANCES (iRELANd) BILL. 

mostly unarmed, but T have my arms under lock and Key, to b« 
delivered for use as occasion may require. I have as much right 
to act against the law in my way as you have in yours." What 
was the difference between this active and passive resistance ? 
Why, the active resister of the law was exposed to great personal 
risk, from which the cunning of the passive resister might screen 
him. In this respect the difference between them was, he admitted, 
great, but in a moral point of view, were they not both the same ? 
The active resister might well ask, " Who gave you the right to 
draw the line, and to say where passive resistance should end, and 
where the active should begin ? Who made you Judges over 
your fellow-countrymen ? What right have you to determine on 
taking up arms, and forming yourselves into what you call a 
national guard ? You say you have grievances to redress. So 
have we. We have woods to cut down, cultivated grounds to 
uncultify, houses and farm-yards to burn down, stewards and land- 
lords to dismiss ; and we do this with the same right that you 
have to take upon you to cure your own wrongs." The Whitefeet 
might be disavowed by the agitators and pacificators, but that the 
acts of the one had a connexion with the agitation of the other 
he thought no man who paid any attention to what was passing 
in Ireland could for a moment entertain a doubt. But suppose, 
for a moment, that no such connexion existed, still he would con- 
tend, that political agitation was a proper subject for legislative 
interference. It was, as it had been seen, a usurpation of tli€ 
power of law, a self-appointed association, sitting to try causes — 
not merely a civil, but also a criminal tribunal, where men 
were denounced for holding certain political opinions, and the 
terror of those denunciations obliged those who gave an honest 
vote to move about with pistols in their pockets for the protection 
of their lives. What did such an association want? A story was 
told of a king of Scotland, who, meeting a border robber, was so 
Struck by the number of his followers and the splendor of their 



DISTl'KBANCES ( IRELAND) BILL. L'23 

appearance, that he exclaimed, " What wants that knave which 
beseems a kino- ?" So he said, what wanted the Volunteers ? 
Not power — not terror — they wanted nothing but responsibility to 
make them a government. He would as soon .trust to them, as 
soon be under their domination, as of those ancient secret societies 
of Germany, who sent their spies abroad, and despatched their 
assassins to the right hand and to the left. History scarcely 
supplied a parallel of a similar association. The present Volun- 
teers compared themselves to the Volunteers of 1782, and to the 
Unions of England. Nothing could be more grossly incorrect 
than the comparison — nothing mure unlike than the two things. 
He knew of no body to which they could be compared — at least 
no existing society. The only one that he could recollect was one 
which, by its applications, had usurped all the powers of Govern- 
ment, and which, through the medium of its dictators, spread 
tyranny over the unhappy country in which it existed. He meant, 
as might be easily seen, the Jacobin Club of the first French revo- 
lution. That club was lono- under the control of a man who was 
the idol of the people, but who, after plunging his country into the 
abyss of ruin, miserably perished. It was to that club, and to that 
only, that the present political associations in Ireland could be 
assimilated. In their organization, in their conduct, there was a 
resemblance between the Jacobin Club and the Irish Volunteers. 
Let anybody read the debates and speeches of both societies, and 
the closest application would be found in his comparison. A mem- 
ber of this Irish association declares that he will stand upon a 
mine, to the train of which the match is about to be applied; if 
the great leader of that association commands it. So, among the 
Jacobins, were found those who would drink poison rather than 
disobey the wishes of their chiefs, or separate themselves from 
their political fortunes. Since those associations followed the 
career chalked out to them by the Jacobins — since they imitated 
tjiejn, in even minute details — should the present Government 



2-4 DISTURBANCES (IRELAND) BILL. 

imitate that weak administration of France, which shut its eye? 
i-pon the designs of those Jacobins — allowed them to wax power- 
ful, and at last to dictate to all without control ? He hoped 
not, and that it would be taught by experience, and destroy the 
evil in its bud. He would ask a Reformed Parliament, freely 
chosen bv the electors of the o-reatest nation of the world, 
whether it was to see such power assumed by any body of men- 
he would ask them as freemen, whether they could sanction the 
existence of such associations '? In former times there were brave 
men who had resisted the tyranny of the Stuarts ; but when they 
saw a fresh tyranny springing up, they naturally enough asked ; 
" Have we slain the lion in order to be devoured by the wolf V 
So he asked, " Had they beaten down parliamentary corruption, 
only to make way for the rule of clubs ?" He belonged to that 
party which had carried Reform, in order to avoid revolution. 
But that party had not fought the battle against the proudest 
aristocracy in the world, in order that an oligarch v which had 
since sprung up should rule in its stead, an oligarchy which had no 
title to power but the lenity of the Government and its own 
audacity. Were they prepared to surrender Ireland to the domi- 
nation of such a party ? It was said that this measure would 
destroy liberty in Ireland. Where was that liberty ? He remem- 
bered in Mr. Matthews's very amusing description of American 
peculiarities, the exclamation of the Kentucky man, who cried out, 
"Pretty liberty, when a man cannot wallop his own nigger. 1 ' He 
might say of the sort of liberty enjoyed in Ireland, "Pretty liberty, 
where a man cannot enjoy or express his own opinion — pretty 
liberty, where a man is not secure of his property or life — where 
he is constantly obliged to go about armed, to protect himself from 
the violence of those who will not allow him to think and judge for 
himself — where he is called upon to resort to those self-constituted 
courts of arbitration rather than to the ordinary tribunals of the land 
^-^ liberty that prevents buying or selling — a liberty that 



DISTURBANCES (iliEl AND) BUL. 225 

flourishes in the midst of conspiracies — a liberty whose insignia 
are plunder and assassination." That was the liberty Ireland was 
to be bereft of! Never was that word more profaned — never was 
that sacred word of liberty more foully abused, than it was at pre- 
sent in Ireland. The history of Europe gave but one example of 
such profanation of the word Liberty— that was, when over the 
doors of the execrable Jacobin Club were emblazoned the words, 
a Liberty or Death." The Government were defending real liberty, 
when they asked for those coercive measures so much decried. 
What were the Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury intended for ? 
Why, to be the means, not the ends, of protecting life and pro- 
perty ; they were valuable, because they secured life — because 
they seemed property — because they protected order — and they 
became worthless the instant they afforded protection to villains 
and depredators. Allusion had been made to former measures of 
this kind. He would say, that there never was a measure which 
stood on such grounds as this, and for which such a necessity 
existed. No Ministry had ever yet applied for such measures whe 
stood upon the same grounds as the present Ministers. The pre- 
sent Minisiers had the confidence of the nation, and would not 
abuse it. They asked for great powers to be granted them ; but. 
at the same time, they felt that they were responsible to a Reformed 
Parliament for the use they made of those powers. Besides, they 
asked for those powers, in order to be able to apply to Ireland 
those measures of redress which they knew she was entitled to. 
It had been argued, last night, by the hon. member for Lincoln 
(Mr. K. L. Bulwer), that, with them, it was "to-day, concession — 
to-morrow, coercion. A quick alternation of kicks and kindness — 
c< »axing with the hand, and spurring with the heel." Such an 
accusation did not come weli and consistently from that hon. 
Member, as he would confess, if he recollected his words on the 
Address to the Throne ; he said then, " If you ask for coercive 
powers, why do you not, at the same time, hold out measures of 



226 DISTL'KBaNCLS (iRELAND) BILL. 

redress ?" — That was the very thing Government did ; it agreeo 
with the hon. Member's first thoughts, which, in his humble 
opinion, were better than his second thoughts. The Government, 
in asking for those measures, gave a strong proof of consistency— 
a strong proof that it acted upon the principles of Reform. It was 
a proof that it still advocated the same principles as when it 
recommended Reform. It was determined to provide a remedy in 
time, so that it might not be compelled to legislate in the midst of 
such scenes as were acted at Nottingham and Bristol. They had 
recommended Reform as a remedy, and they were determined it 
should not be abused. Two different diseases existed in Ireland, 
and they had different remedies for the grievances complained of, 
and for the system of outrage To the latter; which was a tempo- 
rary paroxysm, would be applied temporary remedies — to the 
former, which were founded upon deeply-rooted discontent, would 
be applied an efficacious, speedy, and yet permanent cure. At 
all events, the present Government, in asking for coercive powers, 
were only following the example of the Administrations that 
went before them. He considered, that the present state of 
Ireland might be aptly compared to the state of the Highlands 
of Scotland eighty years ago. At that period there existed in 
the Highlands two species of agitation — predial and political 
agitation. The one carried on under the influence of Lord Lovat, 
resembled the political associations of Ireland at the present day. 
The other, the principle of which was burnings, robbery, and 
murder, was conducted by the noted Rob Roy. The means of 
the two were different, yet they were closely connected. The 
Government of that day broke up the connexion, which was more 
honest than the present, for that was kept up by family ties, 
the present by intimidation ; but the Government broke it up 
by the enactment of salutary laws, and at the same time it 
improved the condition of the Highlanders by making roads 
$r4 bridges, and otherwise facilitating intercourse to every part 



DISTURBANCES (illRLAKo) UTt.L. 22t 

of viie country. And what is now the consequence, he would 
ask, of having then had recourse to means of coercion ? Let 
the Highlanders be asked : there would not be found one among 
them who did not bless the severity used towards them at the 
period mentioned, and the salutary wisdom that dictated that 
severity. lie had no desire whatsoever to disguise the appalling 
features of the present measure. Though it were nothing but a 
mere experiment (if an experiment, it was at least experimentum 
in corpora vili), though its features were still more hideous, yet 
it was less appalling than the state of things in Ireland. It 
asked for courts-martial ; but couid any thing that would result 
from them, by any possibility, be half so despotic and arbitrary 
as what might be expected from the New National Guards 
already organized and prepared to extend their sway ? Look- 
ing at the courts-martial in their worst light, were they so bad 
as the courts which were now opened to try men for theii 
political opinions ; and having passed sentence of denunciation 
against them, to hand them over to the peasantry, with the 
request that they might be dealt with as leniently as possible? 
See how the two systems would operate — that of the proposed 
measure, and the one which at present prevailed. This would tend 
to prevent illegal assemblages at night; that which now prevailed 
tended only to encourage the midnight assassin. This would 
authorize domiciliary visits, in order to find out who were engaged 
in these outrages; the other made those visits only to punish the 
innocent. He knew which species of visits he should prefer; and 
he emphatically declared, that let the measure be stigmatized as it 
might ; let it be branded as an Algerine Act, he preferred it to a 
Kilkenny Act. He would far rather live in Algiers, in its rao^i 
despotic dav, than he would live in the county of Kilkenny at the 
present time. There was last year as ample a suspension of the 
laws in some parts of Ireland as was now demanded ; and yet the 
powers it gave were not abused. The cause of that suspension 



fatSTL'RtlANCES (iRELANT)) RtLL 

wms, to prevent an evil at which even agitation trembled — the 
further propagation of cholera. Now, if it were given him to 
choose, and to say which he should prefer — that dreadful pestilence, 
such as it prevailed in Russia or India, or this moral pestilence, 
under which there was no security for property or life, under which 
men were exposed to the visits of the midnight assassin, and to the 
noonday murderer, to having their houses burned by night, and to 
be shot as they tied from the fearful conflagration — if, he repeated, 
it were o-iven him to make a choice between those two evils, he 
would choose the former ; for he w T ouid say with the Hebrew king, 
" Let me fall into the hands of God, not into those of men." He 
had thus stated his opinion freely and candidly of this measure ; 
but he could assure the House that, in wha* he said, he was in no 
deo-ree influenced by his official connexion with the Government, 
He did not expect any credit on this score from the hon. and 
learned Gentleman opposite. He would admit, that there were 
many cases in which a man might give up his own opinion out of 
respect or attachment to political friends, or from connexions with 
Government ; but the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was 
not one of those cases in which such a sacrifice of opinion could 
be honestly made. He could appeal to many of his hon. friends 
near him, who would bear testimony to the fact that he had come 
down on an early night of the Session, when the measure of 
Church Reform was to be introduced, prepared, in spite of his 
attachment to those who formed the Administration, and in spite of 
his own connexion with Government, to separate himself from that 
Government, if he should not find that the measure to be pro- 
posed was of a nature which the country had a right to expect. 
But as he was then ready to part from Ministers if he could not 
concur with them, so now he was ready to lend them all the feeble 
aid in his power, being firmly convinced that the course which 
they proposed was the right one. He should have no fear of 
meeting his constituents in consequence of his vote on this occa* 



disturbances (treland) bill. 229 

sion. lie knew their zeal for liberty ; but he also knew that it 
was zeal with knowledge. While they would oppose any unne- 
cessary inroad on the rights of any portion of their fellow-subjects, 
they would, though they regretted its necessity, not object to a 
measure which, while it temporarily suspended the Constitution, 
did so only that it might not be wholly endangered by anarchv. 
He would willingly render them an account of his conduct, 
satisfied that they were too sincerely attached to true liberty, and 
too .n lightened, not to distinguish between it and that unbridled 
license which could end only in the worst of slavery. Whatever 
might be the result of the opinions he had expressed, he wouid 
ab'de by them. lie had made up his mind on the subject. He 
might become the victim of popular injustice, but he would never 
condescend to be its flatterei. 



m 



CHURCH REFORM, IRELAND* 

APRIL 1, 1833. 

In Committee on the plan for regulating the temporalities of thi 

Church of Ireland. 

J la Lad two species of opposition to contend against — that of 
these hon. Gentlemen who did not conceive the Bill went far 
enough, and that of those who either considered that it went too 
far, or of those who believed that such a measure never should 
have been entered upon at all. Now, with respect to the first, he 
was glad, at least, to learn from the hon. and learned Member 
opposite, that the Bill was satisfactory so far as it went, and that 
it would not have, in fact, been equally judicious, if at present it 
did go further. On this opinion of the hon. and learned Gen- 
tleman he was willing to rest his defence of the Ministers for 
having gone no further. He was heartily glad that the hon. and 
learned member for Tipperary had withdrawn his notice of Motion, 
which stood upon the books ; and he wished sincerely that that 
hon. and learned Gentleman's example might prevail with others, . 
and induce them in like manner to withdraw the Motions they 
had announced. He conceived that it was a matter of extreme 
importance that this measure should be carried ; and he felt that 
the difficulty of carrying it would be most considerably increased 
if it were made stronger. He consequently should, if it were 
necessary, feel no difficulty in moving the previous question, 
should the hon. Member not consent to withdraw his Amendment. 

* Hansard. 3d Series, vol. xvi. p. 1383-1393. 



CHURCH REFORM, IRELAND. 231 

lie had now, however, to approach the other species of opposition 
against which he had to contend, and which was much the more 
formidable of the two — namely, that the Bill went too far, 01 
rather, that it proceeded on an erroneous principle. Among those 
who had supported this view of the subject, the lion, and learned 
member for Dover had contended, that if his Majesty should oive 
his sanction to this measure, it would be given in direct violation 
of his Coronation Oath. The lion, and learned Member also said, 
that this measure was a violation of the rights of the Church,, and 
of the rights of property. The argument respecting the Corona- 
tion Oath was urged when the questions of the Catholic Eman- 
cip.-.tion and the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts were 
before the House, and he had thought that that argument had 
been so completely refuted on those occasions, that it would not 
have byen brought forward again. He was, however, prepared to 
show that the objection had no force. It was perfectly clear, from 
the words of the oath, that they could not bear the construction 
the lion, and learned Member had put upon them. What was 
the oath ? — that the King would maintain for the Church " all 
such rights as do, or by law shall appertain to the Church." The 
whole force of the passage rested on the word " shall.' 1 In 
another part of the oath his Majesty says, " We declare to govern 
all our people according to the Statutes agreed to in Parliament;" 
but surely that did not mean that his Majesty swore to govern by 
the Statutes actually in existence at the moment he came to the 
Throne. Certainly not; for if that were the sense of the passage, 
every Act of Parliament to which the Sovereign gave his consent, 
in the course of his reign, would be an act of perjurv upon his 
part. How much less, then, was there any doubt of the wording 
wiih respect to the rights and privileges of the Church! The 
fact was, the passage was introduced into the oath for the purpose 
of guarding the Church against such acts as those which James 
£ijij exercised as head of the Church. The present measure corj. 



2S2 CHURCH REFORM, IRELAND. 

tern plated no interference of that kind with the Church, and it 
was perfectly clear to him, that the oath had not the smallest 
reference to the conduct of the King in his legislative capacity, 
and did not bar him from giving his assent to any measure agreed 
to by both Houses of Parliament. Allusion had been made tc 
the articles of the Union as if they prevented any change in the 
established Church of Ireland. The words of the 5th article of 
the Union were, that u the doctrine, discipline, worship and 
government of the Church are to be maintained in both countries 
unchanged. 1 ' I" this measure were passed, all those things would 
be unchanged. No alteration was to be made in the Articles, 
the Book of Common Prayer was untouched, and the discipline 
would still be episcopal, the Archbishops and Bishops would 
retain all their authority, and the doctrine and discipline would be 
unaltered. Would it be said, that the union of certain sees in 
Ireland made any difference in the doctrine, discipline, worship, or 
government of the Church ? He should suppose not. If so, all 
the fundamental principles of the government of the Church of 
England were compromised by the junction between the sees of 
Lichfield and Coventry. Nor were they destroying the Church 
of Ireland by arrangements contained in the Bill for a different 
distribution of church property. Such arrangements had been 
frequently made by the Legislature. The present case was a 
parallel to the case of London after the fire. The number of 
parishes then destroyed was eighty-seven, and soon afterwards an 
Act passed by which they were consolidated, and reduced to fifty- 
one, and a commutation of tithes for a fixed money-payment was 
also ordained. Indeed local Acts of a similar description were 
continually passed, and every one of them was as much the 
destruction of the Church of England as this Bill would be, were 
it to become a law to-morrow. It had next been asserted that the 
rights of property had been attacked by this Bill; this, he main- 
tained, was an assertion; if it could be j»r<>wd, lie would give u^ 



Cttt'KCIT REFORM, IRELAND. 023 

the Bill. The right of property was of immense importance. T-! 
preserve that, Kings, and Parliaments, and Coronation Oaths, aK 
existed. For that alone, law was made. Admitting- the momen- 
tous nature of this consideration, he denied, that the rights of 
property had been attacked by the framers of the Bill. No neces- 
sity existed which should induce Ministers to infringe on those 
sacred rights. On the contrary, Ministers felt bound to defend to 
the utmost the institution of property, believing, as they did. that 
it was to that institution mankind were indebted for the origin and 
the progress of civilization — believing that it was in consequence 
of that institution that we were not now, like our rude ancestors, 
naked and painted bodies, savages feeding upon acorns and shel- 
tering ourselves in caves. They felt, however, at the same time, 
that in the institution of property there were many anomalies and 
evils; and yet these anomalies and evils were not only willingly, 
but cheerfully borne by the many, in consideration of the manifold 
blessings which the institution of property conferred upon society 
at large, lie would admit, too, that the anomalies in the distribu- 
tion <>f the property of the Church of Ireland were not greater 
th.-iit in the distribution of lay property in other countries. It was 
an anomalv, that a young man who had never served the com- 
monwealth either with head or hand should hold possession of 
half a county, while other men who had deserved well of the 
State in arts and arms, were left without an acre; and yet this 
was cheerfully endured bv all, rather than derange the settled 
order of things. This was as great an anomalv as existed betweei 
the Revenues of the Archbishop of Armagh and the poorest 
working curate. But, as mankind found no argument in the 
former for attacking all property, so the latter could apply nc 
inducement to attack the property of the Irish Church. But, the 
more sacred he regarded the right of property, the more care did 
it require that the right should not be enfeebled and contaminated 
by abuses. It was by protecting the abuses with which it was 



234 CHURCH REFORM, IRELAttt). 

mingled that the institution itself was brought Into disrepute". 
The House had heard from an eloquent voice, which, alas ! they 
would never hear again, some opinions upon the subject of thu 
institution of property, to which he entirely subscribed. Ho 
alluded to his excellent and accomplished friend, the late Sir James 
Mackintosh, who in one of the discussions on the Reform Bill, 
while he supported in the strongest way the institution of property, 
denied it was fortified by the abuses which had accumulated 
around it. He said: " Of all doctrines which threaten the prin- 
ciple of property, none more dangerous was ever promulgated, 
than that which confounds it with political privilege: None of 
the disciples of St. Simon, or of the followers of the ingenious 
and benevolent Owen, have struck so deadly a blow at property, 
as those who would reduce it to the level of the elective rights of 
Gatton and Old Sarum. Property, the nourisher of mankind, the 
incentive of industry, the cement of human society, will be in a 
perilous condition, if the people be taught to identify it with 
political abuses, and to deal with it as being involved in their 
impending fate." He entirely concurred in those observations, 
and objected strongly to those who cried out that the institution 
of property was endangered by removing any of the abuses that 
had gathered about it. He believed the Government were most 
anxious to preserve the institution of property ; but he thought 
that the best and truest friends of the institution of property had 
little reason to be obliged to those who talked of Old Sarum as 
being property, and vested rights existing in it; and of the ano- 
malies and abuses of the Irish Church being sacred property. He 
wished to have it understood, at the same time, that he allowed 
an incumbent had a right of property in his benefice, but not of 
the same species with the right to landed property. The incum- 
bent was a proprietor, but he was also a public functionary ; and 
his rights in the former capacity were controlled by his duties in 
the latter. He held this property, as subject not onlv to the 



CHURCH REFORM, IRELAND. TSt) 

existing regulations, but also to such as the Legislature migh 
choose hereafter to impose. The hon. Gentlemen opposite must 
allow that, unless they were prepared to charge a number of 
former Parliaments with spoliation, and many of the noblest 
characters whose names graced our history with having encouraged 
schemes of robbery, there was nothing in this Bill which could 
authorise the allegations which had been thrown out against it. 
It was not a spoliation of individuals; it was not a confiscation of 
property. It did not legalize rapine and plunder. If that were 
its* character, what must the Act of Supremacy have been ? That 
Act deprived Clergymen who took orders under previous circum- 
stances, of their benefices. It was true they were not married, for 
that was not permitted ; but they might have incurred debts, and 
involved themselves in pecuniary obligations Vet, without any 
regard to their possible situation, the Parliament passed an Act of 
expulsion against any clergyman who refused to acknowledge the 
supremacy of Queen Elizabeth. He was aware that few clergymen 
were affected by that Act, because the great majority took the 
oath ; but one instance of a clergyman expelled was as complete 
an illustration of the principle as a hundred. That Act was passed 
when the opinions of men were loose and unsettled, but never- 
theless that House would not condemn an Act by which the Refor- 
mation was firmly established in England. Again, at the time of 
the Restoration, when the Act of Uniformity was passed, the 
Pr iver Book was altered. It was changed from that which it 
had been in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. ; and those cler- 
gymen who might conscientiously object to the new Prayer Book, 
were liable to be turned out of their benefices. The Clergymen 
were all told, that if they did not before a fixed day — and that 
day was St. Bartholomew — notify their assent to the new Prayer 
Books, they would be ejected from the Church. The consequence 
was, that several thousands of the clergy were obliged to abandon 
their livings, awl the Church lost several distinguished, men. lie 



236 CHCIiCH REFOKM, IRELAND. 

admitted, that the authority of many exemplary and excellent 
individuals was given, to add weight to the principles of thin 
Act; and that it received the sanction of Sheldon, of Juxon, and 
of other equally celebrated men. That Act was either one of 
direct spoliation, or else there was an absolute distinction between 
Church property and other property ; since the proprietors of 
benefices were deprived of their property, for refusing to conform 
to certain prescribed regulations which were not enforced until 
long after they were in possession of their benefices. He would 
not dwell on the changes at the Revolution, but he would come to 
an Act passed in our own time, introduced by one who could not 
be accused of any wish to lessen the right to church property — 
the late Mr. Perceval — and followed up and perfected by Lord 
Harrowbv. According to the principles laid down to-night, this 
must have been as complete a spoliation of property as ever was 
committed. It provided, that all non-resident clergymen should, 
under certain circumstances, pay a salary to a curate, proceeding 
upon a graduated scale, almost similar to that recommended in the 
measure now before the House. That was as much a violation of 
the incumbent's right of property as was contemplated by the 
present Hill. The right bora, member for Tamworth said, on a 
former debate, that if the Legislature imposed a tax on absentees, 
it would be neither more nor less than an act of confiscation. He 
said, that such a proceeding would be utterly inconsistent with 
the preservation of the rights of property. But, in the Bill he 
ii.id just alluded to, and which was introduced by one who was a 
leader of the high Church party, within the last thirty years, there 
was either a recognition of the difference between Church property 
and other property; or else it was a positive confiscation of 
property: His own opinion of church property was, that it was a 
sort of mixed property—- that it was something more than salary, 
and something less than an estatu ; ami no man could deny, after 

the Qi\m he had o A uoted, that the Legislature j^ a right to deal 



CH- ''(! Kr.FOliM, !!!K!..\ND. 237 

with it, Tn one sense it might be compared to the half-pay of out 
army and navv. No man would say, that the total abolition of 
iJaat half-pay would not be a grievous spoliation. Vet, though it 
was admitted to be the property of the individual, no man would 
deny the right of the State to regulate it in any manner it pleased. 
Such power had repeatedly been exercised, in changes and regula- 
tions respecting it, both in respect of the amount, and of the 
administration of the fund from whence it was paid, when the 
benefit of the service had seemed to require it. If the good of 
the Church, and the well-being of the community, could be pro- 
moted bv a new distribution of Church property, was there any 
reason why the Legislature should not make it — provided that 
existing interests were honestly and liberally considered ? He 
admitted that this measure would take something; from the dlersfv ; 
but in no case would it take such an amount as to reduce any of 
them to distress. The money to be taken from them was to be 
applied to purposes beneficial to the clergy themselves, and to the 
security of the Church in Ireland, by removing some portion of 
that, odium, which was entertained to an alarming extent against 
the Establishment in that country. He did not expect to hear any 
hon. member of that House contend, that not filling up a vacant 
bishopric was a spoliation, or a violation of property. How could 
it ? There could be no robbery where there was no person to be 
robbed, and there could be no injury where there was no one tc 
be injured. The bishopric of Waterford, for instance, was vacant, 
and it was not the intention of Government to fill up the vacancy. 
To whom was the injury done here ? Not to the bishop — for 
there was none ; not to his predecessor, for he was dead; nor to 
any of the 10,000 person? from whom a selection might be nade, 
not one of whom would probably consider his chance of the 
appointment worth a sovereign. There was, then, no injury to 
any, unless it could be shown that those who had been under tha 
spiritual care of the preceding bishop were to be left without 



23b CHURCH RKFORM, IRELAND. 

future spiritual instruction ; but if adequate provision were to b< 
made on that head, there could be no injury to an}' party, but 
there would be a direct and positive good in the application of the 
revenues of that see to other Church purposes which required 
them. He had heard with astonishment the argument of the hon. 
and learned member for the University of Dublin, who main- 
tained, " that the whole property of the Church, even for the 
purpose of distribution, was beyond the control of Parliament, and 
that no Parliament could sanction any measure of this kind 
without being guilty of sacrilege." He denied the truth of the 
proposition of the hon. and learned Gentleman. Parliament had 
the same power to alter and remodel, as to frame ; and the Church 
of England had no rights, except under the Act of the Legislature. 
Did the hon. and learned Member say, that the unity of thv 
Church would be destroyed by the diminution of ten Bishops in 
Ireland, when the whole doctrine, and discipline, and worship, 
continued the same ? Or did he mean to say, that that unity was 
to be kept up only by its temporalities remaining in the same 
hands ? Did he mean to renew the doctrine of those who once 
held, that the gold was to be preferred to the temple which sanc- 
tified it ? Had the clergy of England been as inflexible in doctrine 
as some of their Bishops at the period of some of the changes of 
doctrine and worship to which he had already alluded, would not 
the whole of the Church property of the country have changed 
hands ? What would then have been said of the identity of the 
Church ? What would the hon. Baronet, the member for the 
University of Oxford, say to a revision of the wills of those pious 
men by which the colleges which he represented had been so 
liberally founded, and so munificently endowed ? If he contended 
that any interference with Church property was spoliation, as no 
doubt he would conte- ' j what would he say, on referring back to 
the wills and donations of some of the pious founders of the 
colleges of Oxford ? William of Wyckham ; Chicheley, ^e oppo- 



CTH'KON REFOKM, TREt.AS'D. 230 

Dent of the Lollards ; Flemming, the cti«*rtiy of Wickliffe . Cardinal 
Wolsey, a Candidate for the Papal Throne; Sir Thomas Pope, 
the follower of Mary and the teacher of Elizabeth — would have 
burned off their hands before they left bequests which they con- 
ceived were likely to be used against the religion they professed. 
If an}- one had told any of those pious founders, that mass would 
sooti cease to be celebrated in the chapels? which they had built, 
and that the refectories and chambers of the halls and colleges 
winch they had endowed, would no longer be Occupied by those 
who acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome in 
England, thev would much rather have left their monev for the 
education of laymen without religion than have it used for the 
dissemination of doctrines which they considered as atrocious 
heresy. He would support the measure because he thougfht it 
would tend to the peace of Ireland — to the preservation of property 
there — to the real benefit of the clergy. It was the beginning of 
a series of judicious measures of reform, which would creatlv 
promote the interests of religion and of the Established Church. 
He looked upon it also as one which would be for the interest of 
the people of England. But, before he concluded, he was anxious 
to remark that one of the objections urged against the Bill, was 
that by reducing the number of Bishops they left no room for the 
expansive force of Protestantism — no machinery by which the 
affairs of an Enlarged Church might be administered. Ireland 
was about half the size of England, and she was to have half the 
number of Bishops which England had. If Protestantism should 
expand, it would have the machinery necessary for such expansion ; 
but he owned that he did not anticipate any such expansion, with 
ail its wealth, and power, and learning. It had not been deficient 
in these aids— it had not lacked the aid of whatever they could 
give of penal laws in its favour ; and yet the Protestants of Ire- 
land at the present day were not a fourth of the population, and 
of that small number more than the half did not belonff -to the 



'240 riit/kcii uk^'orm, tKfct.AKD. 

Established Church'. Compare the expansive power of Protcs* 
tantism in Ireland for the last century and a half with that which 
existed in the 16th century. The spirit — the restless and over- 
mastering spirit — of Protestantism was much changed. That 
.spirit which displayed itself in so eminent a degree n the 16th 
century, which bore it along triumphantly against Popes and 
Caesars, and General Councils, and Princes, and Prelates — which 
enabled it to subdue conquerors and armies — made it proof 
against inquisitions, and dungeons, and racks, and slow fires — had 
fled. The heart and mind of man, supported by the enthusiasm 
of a pure faith, had then triumphed over all opposition against ail 
Within a brief period Protestantism had spread from the Yistulf 
to the Danube; from the Pyrenees to the Frozen Ocean. Tin 
same person who heard Luther preach his first sermon agains; 
indulgences, might, without enjoying a life protracted to a great 
number of years, have observed Protestantism expanding itself, 
and established in England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Sweden, 
Denmark, Norway, the North of Germany, a part of Switzerland, 
and struggling: in France, not for toleration, but for supremacy. 
But, as a Protestant, he regretted to say, that Protestantism had 
made comparatively little progress during the three last centuries. 
It remained, on the Continent, where it had reached in the days 
of Philip and Mary, or rather it had receded within the marks to 
which it had then extended. And what had already arrested its 
course in Ireland ? Was it that the doctrines were less pure, oi 
was it, that from the constitution of the human mind, as men 
became more and more enlightened, they were less and less 
capable of perceiving the pure truth ? "Was it that the Protestant 
Church in Ireland had not been supported by wealth, and dignity, 
and power, and by the aid of favouring and penal laws ? Certainly 
not. How then was it ? If he were a Roman Catholic, he might 
say, because the Catholic faith was strong in its strength, and 
founded on the immortality of truth ; but, being a Protestant, lie 



Cfit RCH REFORM, iRELAtti). 241 

must loo',, for some other reason, and inquire if they had not 
incumbered the Establishment by worse than superfluous helps, 
and whether in succeeding to the wealth and pomp of the religion 
of Rome, Protestantism had not become tainted with something 
of the languor of the old religion ! Had the progress of vigorous 
and sound thought been arrested by that fatal languor which 
accounted for the want of success of a great general of antiquity, 
who declared he had lost more at Capua than he gainel at Cannae ? 
How was it that the spirit of Protestantism had died out where it 
had been raised to honour and wealth, when it had formerly 
extended itself, in spite of opposition, over all the kingdoms of 
Europe ? He would not however pursue that painful theme. For 
himself, at least, he must say, that he did not conceive that there 
could be any marvellous advantage to the cause of Protestantism, 
by the retention of the sees which the Bill proposed to dispense 
with hereafter. If Protestantism depended upon sees, there would 
not be a Presbyterian in Ulster, nor a Catholic in Connaught. It 
was time that they should try new councils, and that they should 
remove the grievances of the Dissenters, and restore peace to 
Ireland, and its just and proper powers to the Protestant Church. 



Vol. L 11 



242 



THE EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL.* 

july 10, 1833. 

Having, while this measure was in preparation, enjoyed the 
fullest and kindest confidence of my right hon. friend, agreeing 
with him completely in all those views which on a former occasion 
he so luminously and eloquently developed, having shared his 
anxieties, and feeling that, in some degree, I share his respon- 
sibility, I am naturally desirous to obtain the attention of the 
House while I attempt to defend the principles of this Bill. I 
wish that I could promise to be very brief; but the subject is 
so extensive that I will only promise to condense what I have to 
say as much as I can. 

I rejoice, Sir, that I am completely dispensed, by the turn which 
our debates have taken, from the necessity of. saying anything ir 
favour of one part of our measure — the opening of the China 
trade. No voice, I believe, has yet been raised in Parliament to 
support the monopoly. On that subject all public men of all 
parties seem to be agreed. The resolution proposed by the 
Ministers has received the unanimous assent of both Houses, and 
the approbation of the whole kingdom. I will not, therefore, Sir,, 
detain the House by vindicating a measure which no gentleman 
has yet ventured to attack, but will proceed to call your attention 
to those effects which this great commercial revolution necessarily 
produced on the system of Indian government and finance. 

The China Trade is tc be opened : reason requires this— public 
opinion requires it The Government of the Duke of Wellington 

* Hansard, 3d Series voL xix. p. 503-536 



EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 243 

telt the necessity as strongly as the Government of Lord Grev. Nc 
Minister, Whig or Tory, could have been found to propose a 
renewal of the monopoly ; no parliament, reformed or unreformcd, 
would have listened to such a proposal. But though the opening 
of the trade was a matter concerning which the public had long 
made up its mind, the political consequences which necessarily 
follow from the opening of the trade, seem to me to be even now 
little understood. The language which I have heard in almost 
every circle where the subject was discussed was this: "Take 
away the monopoly, and leave the government of India to the 
Company ;" a very short and convenient way of settling one of 
the most complicated questions that ever a Legislature had to 
consider. The hon. member for Sheffield, though not disposed to 
retain the Company as an organ of government, has repeatedly 
used language which proves that he shares in the general miscon- 
ception. The fact is, that the abolition of the monopoly rendered 
it absolutely necessary to make a fundamental change in the 
constitution of that great Corporation. 

The Company had united in itself two characters : the character 
of trader and the character of sovereign. Between the trader and 
the sovereign there was a long and complicated account, almost 
everv item of which furnished matter for litigation. While the 
monopoly continued, indeed, litigation was averted. The effect of 
the monopoly was, to satisfy the claims both of commerce and of 
territory, at the expense of a third party — the English people ; to 
secure on the one hand funds for the dividend of the stock-holder, 
and on the other hand, funds for the government of the Indian 
Empire, by means of a heavy tax on the tea consumed in this 
country. But when the third party would no longer bear this 
charge, all the great financial questions which had, at the cost of 
that third party, been kept in abeyance, were opened in an instant. 
The connexion between the Company in its mercantile capacity, and 
the same Company in its political capacity, was dissolved. The sovq- 



244 EAST-INDIA COMPANY' S CHARTER DILL. 

reign and the trader, from partners, became litigants. Even if th« 
Company were permitted, as has been suggested, to govern India 
and at the same time to trade with China, it would make no 
advances from the profits of its Chinese trade for the support of its 
Indian government. It was in consideration of its exclusive 
privilege, that it had hitherto been required to make those 
advances; — it was by the exclusive privilege that it had been 
enabled to make them. When that privilege was taken away, 
it would be unreasonable in the Legislature to impose such an 
obligation, and impossible for the Company to fulfil it. The whole 
system of loans from commerce to territory, and repayments from 
territory to commerce, must cease. Each party must rest altogether 
on its own resources. It was, therefore, absolutely necessary to 
ascertain what resources each party possessed, to bring the long 
and intricate account between them to a close, and to assign to 
each a fair portion of assets and liabilities. There was vast 
property. How much of that property was applicable to purposes 
of state ? How much was applicable to a dividend ? There were 
debts to the amount of many millions. Which of these were the 
debts of the government that ruled at Calcutta? Which of the 
great mercantile house that bought tea at Canton ? Were the 
creditors to look to the land revenues of India for their money; or 
were they entitled to put executions into the warehouses behind 
Bishopsgate-street ? 

There were two ways of settling these questions — adjudication, 
and compromise. The difficulties of adjudication were great — I 
think insuperable. Whatever acuteness and diligence could doj 
has been done. One person in particular whose talents and 
industry peculiarly fitted him for such investigations, and of whom 
I can never think without regret, Mr. Villiers, devoted himself to 
the examination with an ardour and a perseverance which, I 
believe, shortened a life most valuable to his country and to 
his friends. The assistance of the most skilful accouutants has 



EAST-INDIA COMPA.w'ti CHARTER BILL. 245 

been called in. But the difficulties are such as no accountant, 
however skilful, could possibly remove. The difficulties are not 
arithmetical, but political. They arise from the constitution of the 
Company, from the long and intimate union of the commercial and 
imperial characters in one body. Suppose that a gentleman who is 
the treasurer of a charity, were to mix up the money which he 
receives on account of the charity with his own private rents and 
dividends, to pay the whole into his bank to his own private 
account, to draw it out again by checks in exactly the same form 
when he wants it for his private expenses, and when he wants it 
for the purposes of his public trust. Suppose that he were to 
continue to act thus till lie was himself ignorant whether he were 
in advance or in arrcar; and suppose that many years after his 
death a question were to arise whether his estate were in debt to 
the charity or the charity in debt to his estate. Such is the question 
which is now before us — with this important difference: that the 
accounts of an individual could not be in such a state unless he had 
been guilty of fraud, or of that crassa negligentia which is scarcely 
less culpable than fraud, and that the accounts of the Company 
were brought into this state by circumstances of a very peculiai 
kind — by circumstances unparalleled in the lr.story of the world 
It is a mistake to suppose that the Company was a merely 
commercial body till the middle of the last century. Commerce 
was its object; but in order to enable it to pursue that object, it 
had been, like the other Indian Companies which were its rivals, 
like the Dutch India Company, like the French India Company, 
invested from a very early period with political functions. More 
than 120 years ago, it was in miniature precisely what it now is. It 
was intrusted with the very highest prerogatives of sovereignty. It 
had its forts and its white captains, and its black sepoys — it had its 
civil and criminal tribunals — it was authorised to proclaim Martial- 
law — it sent ambassadors to the native governments, and concluded 
treatiep with tbein — it was Zemindar of several districts, and 



246 B AST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 

within those districts, like other Zemindars of the first class, it 
exercised the powers of a sovereign, even 10 the infliction of capita! 
punishment on the Hindoos within its jurisdiction. It is incorrect, 
therefore, to say, that the Company was at first a mere trader, and 
has since become a sovereign. It was first a great trader and 
a petty prince. Its political functions at first attracted little 
notice, because they were merely auxiliary to its commercial 
functions. Soon, however, they became more and more important. 
The Zemindar became a great nabob, became sovereign of all India 
— the 200 sepoys became 200,000. This change was gradually 
wrought, and was not immediately comprehended. It was natural, 
that while the political functions of the Company were merely 
auxiliary to its commerce, its political accounts shonld be mixed up 
with its commercial accounts. It was equally natural, that when 
once this mode of keeping accounts had been commenced, it should 
go on; and the more so, as the change in the situation of the 
Company, though rapid, was not sudden. It is impossible to fix 
on any one day, or any one year, as the day or the year when the 
Company became a great potentate. It has been the fashion 
to fix on the year 1765, the year in which the Company received 
from the Mogul a Commission authorising them to administer 
the revenues of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, as the precise date of 
their sovereignty. I am utterly at a loss to understand why this 
peri 3d should be selected. Long before 1*765 the Company had 
the reality of political power. Long before that year, they made 
a nabob of Areot ; they made and unmade nabobs of Bengal ; 
they humbled the vizier of Oude; they braved the emperor of 
Hindostan himself. More than half the revenues of Bengal, as 
Lord Clive stated, were under one pretence or another administered 
by them. And after the grant, the Company was not, in form 
and name, an independent power. It was merely a minister of 
the Court of Delhi. Its coinage bore the name of Shah Alum. 
The inscription which, till the time of Lord Hastings, appeared ojj 



EAST-INDIA COMPANY^ CHARTER BILL. 24? 

the seal of the Governor-General, declared that great functionary tc 
be the slave of the Mogul. Even to this day, we have nevei 
formally deposed the king of Delhi. The Company contents itself 
with being Mayor of the palace, while the rot faineant is suffered to 
play at being a sovereign. In fact, it was considered, both by 
Lord Clive and by Warren Hastings, as a point of policy to leave 
the character of the Company thus undefined, in order that the 
English might treat the princes in whose names they governed as 
realities or nonentities, just as might be most convenient. 

Thus the transformation of the Company from a trading body, 
which possessed some sovereign prerogatives for the purposes of 
trade, into a sovereign body, the trade of which was auxiliary to 
its sovereignty, was effected by degrees, and under disguise. It is 
not strange, therefore, that its mercantile and political transactions 
should be entangled together in inextricable complication. The 
commercial investments had been purchased out of the revenues 
of the empire. The expenses of war and government had been 
defrayed out of the profits of the trade. Commerce and territory 
had contributed to the improvement of the same spot of land, to 
the repairs of the same building. Securities had been given in 
precisely the same form, for money which had been borrowed for 
purposes of Stale, and for money which had been borrowed for 
purposes of traffic. It is easy, indeed, — and this is a circumstance 
which has, I think, misled some Gentlemen, — it is easy to see 
what part of the assets of the Company appears in a commercial 
form, and what part appears in a political or territorial form. But 
this is not the question. Assets w r hich are commercial in form, 
may be territorial as respects the right of property ; assets which 
are territorial in form, may be commercial as respects the right of 
property. A chest of tea is not necessarily commercial property; 
it may have been bought out of the territorial revenue. A fort is 
not necessarily territorial property ; it may stand on ground which 
the Company bought 1 00 years ago out of their commercial profits, 



§48 EAST-INOiA COMPANY'S CliARTEtt BILL. 

Adjudication, if by adjudication be meant decision according ta 
some known rule of law, was out of the question. To leave 
matters like these to be determined by the ordinary maxims of our 
civil jurisprudence would have been the height of absurdity and 
injustice. For example, the home-bond debt of the Company, it is 
believed, was incurred partly for political, and partly for commercial 
purposes. But there is no evidence which would enable us to 
assign to each branch its proper share. The bonds all run in the 
same form ; and a Court of Justice would, therefore, of course 
either lay the whole burthen on the proprietors, or lay the whole 
on the territory. We have legal opinions, very respectable legal 
opinions, to the effect that in strictness of law, the territory is not 
responsible, and that the commercial assets are responsible for 
every farthing of the debts which were incurred for the government 
and defence of India. But, though this may be, and I believe, is 
law, it. is, I am sure, neither reason nor justice. On the other 
hand, it is urged by the advocates of the Company, that some 
valuable portions of the territory are the property of that body in 
its commercial capacity ; that Calcutta, for example, is their private 
estate, though they have, during many years, suffered its revenues 
to merge in the general revenues of their empire, that they hold 
the island of Bombay, in free and common socage, as of the Manor 
of East Greenwich. I will not pronounce any opinion on these 
points. I have considered them enough to see, that there is quite 
difficulty enough in them to exercise all the ingenuity of all the 
Jawyeis in the kingdom for twenty years. But the fact is, Sir, that 
the mumcipa law was not made for controversies of this description. 
The existence of such a body as this gigantic corporation — this 
political monster of two natures — subject in one hemisphere, 
sovereign in another — -had never been contemplated by the 
Legislators or Judges of former ages. Nothing but grotesque 
absurdity and atrocious injustice could have been the effect, if the 
claims and liabilities of such a body had been settled according tc 



EAST-INDIA COMPANY S CHARTER BILL. 24& 

the rules of Westminster Hall — if the maxims of conveyancers had 
been applied to tl e titles by which flourishing cities and provinces 
are held, or the maxims of the law-merchant to those promissory 
notes which are the securities for a great National Debt, raised for 
the purpose of exterminating the Pindarrees, and humbling the 
Burmese. 

It was, as I have said, absolutely impossible to bring the question 
between commerce and territory to a satisfactory adjudication ; 
and, I must add, that, even if the difficulties which I have 
mentioned could have been surmounted — even if there had been 
reason to hope that a satisfactory adjudication could have been 
obtained — I should still have wished to avoid that course. I think 
it desirable that the Company should continue to have a share in 
the government of India ; and it would evidently have been 
impossible, pending a litigation between commerce and territory, 
to leave any political power to the Company. It would clearly 
have been the duty of those who were charged with the super- 
intendence of India, to be the patrons of India throughout that 
momentous litigation, to scrutinize with the utmost severity, every 
claim which might be made on the Indian revenues, and to oppose 
with energy and perseverance, every such claim, unless its justice 
were manifest. If the Company was to be engaged in a suit for 
many millions, in a suit which might last for many years, against 
the Indian territory, could we intrust the Company with the 
government of that territory? Could we put the plaintiff in the 
situation of prockain ami of the defendant ? Could we appoint 
governors who would have had an interest opposed in the most 
direct manner to the interest of the governed, whose stock would 
have been raised in value by every decision which added to the 
burthens of their subjects, and depressed by every decision which 
diminished those burthens? It would be absurd to suppose that 
they would efficiently defend our Indian Empire against the claims 
which they were themselves bringing against it; and it would b« 



2cO EAST-INDIA COMPANY S CHARTER BILL. 

equally absurd to give the government of the Indian empire at such 
a conjuncture to those who could not be trusted to defend it. 

Seeing, then, that it was most difficult, if not wholly impossible, 
to resort to adjudication between commerce and territory — seeing, 
that if recourse were had to adjudication, it would be necessary to 
make a comolete revolution in the whole constitution of India^ — 
the Government proposed a compromise. That compromise, with 
some modifications which did not, in the slightest degree, affect 
its principle, and which, while they gave satisfaction to the 
Company, will eventually lay no additional burthen on the 
territory, has been accepted. It has, like all other compromises, 
been loudly censured by violent partisans on both sides. It has 
been represented by some as far too favourable to the Company, 
and by others as most unjust to the Company. Sir, I own that 
we cannot prove that either of these accusations is unfounded. 
It is of the very essence of our case that we should not be able 
to show, that we have assigned, either to commerce or to territory, 
its precise due. For our principal reason for recommending a 
compromise was our full conviction that it was absolutely impos- 
sible to ascertain with precision what was due to commerce, and 
what was due to territory. It is not strange that some people 
should accuse us of robbing the Company, and others of conferring 
a vast boon on the Company, at the expense of India; for we have 
proposed a middle course, on the very ground that there was* a 
chance of a result much ra ->re favourable to the Company than onr 
arrangement, and a chance also of a result much less favourable. 
If the questions pending between the Company and India had been 
decided as the ardent supporters of the Company predicted, 
India would, if I calculate rightly, have paid eleven millions more 
than she will now have to pay. If those questions had bet \ de- 
cided, as some violent enemies of the Company predicted, that 
great body would have been utterly ruined. The very meaning of 
compromise is ? that each party gives up his chance of complete 



EASf-flfbiA C0MPAN T Y*3 CHARTER BILL. £5! 

success, in order to be secured against the chance of utter failure. 
And as men of sanguine minds always overrate the chances in their 
own favour, every fair compromise is sure to be severely censured 
on both sides. I contend, that in a case so dark and complicated 
as this, the compromise which we recommend is sufficiently vin- 
dicated, if it cannot be proved to be unfair. We are not bound 
to prove it to be fair. For it would have been unnecessary for us 
to resort to compromise at all, if we had been in possession of 
evidence which would have enabled us to pronounce, with cer- 
tainty, what claims were fair and what were unfair. It seems to me 
that we have acted with due consideration for every party. The 
dividend which we give to the proprietors is precisely the same 
dividend which they have been receiving for forty years, and whicr 
they have expected to receive permanently. The price of their stock 
bears at present the same proportion to the price of other stock 
which it bore four or five years ago, before the anxiety and excite- 
ment which a negotiation for a renewal of their Charter naturally 
produces, had begun to operate. As to the territory on the other 
hand, it is true, that if the assets which are now in a commercial 
form, should not produce a fund sufficient to pay the debts and 
dividend of the Company, the territory must stand to the loss 
and pay the difference. But in return for taking this risk, the 
territory obtains an immediate release from claims to the amount 
of many millions. T certainly do not believe that all those claims 
;ould have been substantiated; but I know that very able men 
think differently And suppose that only one-fourth of the sum 
demanded had been awarded to the Company, India would have 
lost more than the largest sum which, as it seems to me, she can 
possibly lose under the arrangement. 

In a pecuniary point of view, therefore, I conceive that we can 
defend the measure as it affects the territory. But to the territory, 
the pecuniary question is of secondary importance. If we have 
made a good pecuniary bargain for India, but a bad political 



2f>§ fiAst-itfbiA company's Charter BILL. 

bargain — if we have saved three or four millions to the finances oi 
that country, and given to i% at the same time, pernicious institu- 
tions, we shall, indeed, have been practising a most ruinous par- 
simony. If, on the other hand, it shall be found that we have 
added fifty or a hundred thousand pounds a-yeartothe expenditure 
of an empire which yields a revenue of twenty millions, but that 
we have at the same time secured to that empire, as far as in us 
lies, the blessings of good government, we shall have no reason to 
be ashamed of our profusion. I hope and believe that India will 
have to pay nothing. But on the most unfavourable supposition 
that can be made, she will not have to pay so much to the Com- 
pany, as she now pays annually to a single state pageant — to the 
titular Nabob of Bengal, for example, or the titular King of 
Delhi. What she pays to these nominal princes, who, while they 
did anything, did mischief, and who now do nothing, she may 
well submit to pay to her real rulers, if she receives from them, in 
return, efficient protection, and good legislation. 

We come then to the great question. Is it desirable to retain 
the Company as an organ of government for India? I think that 
it is desirable. The question is, I acknowledge, beset with 
difficulties. We have to solve one of the hardest problems in 
politics. We are tmng to make brick without straw — to bring 
a clean thing out of an unclean — to give a good government to 
a people to whom we cannot give a free government. In this 
country — in any neighbouring country — it is easy to frame 
securities against oppression. In Europe, you have the materials 
of good government every where ready to your hands. The 
people are every where perfectly competent to hold some share,— 
not in every country an equal share — but some share of political 
power. If the question were, what is the best mode of securing 
good government in Europe, the merest smatterer in politics would 
answer — representative institutions. In India, you cannot have 
representative institutions. Of all the innumerable speculators whe 



It Aftf -INDIA COMPANY'S CttARTEft BtLt. 25b 

have offered their suggestions on Indian politics, not a single one, 
as far as I know, however democratical his opinions may be, has 
ever maintained the possibility of giving, at the present time, 
such institutions to India. One gentleman, extremely well ac- 
quainted with the affairs of our Eastern Empire, a most valuable 
servant of the Company, and the author of a History of India 
which, though certainly not free from faults, is, I think, or 
the whole, the greatest historical work which has appeared in 
our language since that of Gibbon — I mean Mr. Mill — was 
examined on this point. That gentleman is well known to be 
a very bold and uncompromising politician. He has written 
strongly — far too strongly, I think, in favour of pure democracy, 
He has gone so far as to maintain, that no nation which has not a 
representative legislature, chosen by universal suffrage, enjoys 
security against oppression. But when he was asked before the 
Committee of last year, whether he thought representative govern- 
ment practicable in India, his answer was — " utterly out of the 
question." This, then, is the state in which we are. We have to 
frame a good government for a country into which, by universal 
acknowledgment, we cannot introduce these institutions which all 
our habits — which all the reasonings of European philosophers — 
which all the history of our own part of the world would lead us 
to consider as the one great security for good government. We 
have to engraft on despotism those blessings which are the natural 
fruits of liberty. In these circumstances, Sir, it behoves us to be 
cautious, even to the verge of timidity. The light of political 
science and of history are withdrawn — we are walking in darkness 
— we do not distinctly see whither we are going. It is the wisdom 
of a man, so situated, to feel his way, and not to plant his foot till 
he is well assured that the ground before him is firm. 

Some things, however, in the midst of this obscurity, I can se« 

vith clearness. I can see, for example, that it is desirable that the 

ithority exercised in this country over the Indian government 



254 Ei.Sf-ttft>tA COMPANY'S CIIARfEfc SILL. 

should be divided between two bodies — between a minister on t 
board appointed by the Crown, and some other body independent 
of the Crown. If India is to be a dependency of England — to be 
at war with our enemies — to be at peace with our allies — to be 
protected by the English navy from maritime aggression — to have 
a portion of the English army mixed with its sepoys — it plainly 
follows, that the King, to whom the Constitution give3 the 
direction of foreign affairs, and the command of the military and 
naval forces, ought to have a share in the direction of the Indian 
government. Yet, on the other hand, that a revenue of twenty 
millions a year — an army of two hundred thousand men — a civil 
service abounding with lucrative situations — should be left to the 
disposal of the Crown without any check whatever, is what no mi- 
nister, I conceive, would venture to propose. This House is indeed 
the check provided by the Constitution on the abuse of the Royal 
prerogative. But that this House is, or is likely ever to be, an effi- 
cient check on abuses practised in India, I altogether deny. We 
ha?e ; as I believe we all feel, quite business enough. If we were to 
undertake the task of looking into Indian affairs as we look into 
British affairs — if we were to have Indian budgets and Indian 
estimates — if we were to go into the Indian currency question and 
the Indian Bank Charter — if to our disputes about Belgium and 
Holland, Don Pedro and Don Miguel, were to be added disputes 
about the debts of the Guicowar and the disorders of Mysore, the 
ex-king of the Afghans and the Maha-rajah Runjeet Sing — if we 
were to have one night occupied by the embezzlements of the 
Benares mint, and another by the panic in the Calcutta money- 
market — if the questions of Suttee or no Suttee, Pilgrim tax or no 
Pilgrim tax, Ryotwary or Zemindary, half Batta or whole Batta, 
were to be debated at the same length at which we have debated 
Church reform and the assessed taxes, twenty-four hours a day 
and three hundred and sixty-five days a year would be too short a 
time for the discharge of our duties. The House, it is plain, has 



EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 255 

not the necessary time to settle these matters ; nor has it the 
necessary knowledge, nor has it the motives to acquire that know- 
ledge. The late change in its constitution has made it, I believe, a 
much more faithful representation of the English people. But it is 
far as ever from being a representation of the Indian people. A 
broken head in Cold Bath Fields produces a greater sensation 
among us than three pitched battles in India. A few weeks ago 
we had to decide on a claim brought by an individual against the 
revenues of India. If it had been an English question the walk 
would scarcely have held the Members who would have flocked tc 
the division. It was an Indian question, and we could scarceh 
by dint of supplication make a House. Even when my right 
hon. friend, the President of the Board of Control, made his 
most, able and interesting statement of the measures which he 
intended to propose for the government of a hundred millions 
of human beings, the attendance was not so large as I have seen 
it on a turnpike-bill or a railroad bill. 

I then take these things as proved, that the Crown must have 
a certain authority over India, that there must be an efficient 
check on the authority of the Crown, and that the House of 
Commons is not an efficient check. We must then find some 
other body to perform that important office. We have such a 
body — the Company. Shall we discard it? 

It is true that the power of the Company is an anomaly in 
politics. It is strange — very strange — that a Joint-sto<»k society 
of traders — a society, the shares of whicl e daily passe I from 
hand to hand— a society, the component parts of which are 
perpetually changing — * &c<iety which, judging a priori from its 
constitution, we eLcujQ have said was as little fitted for imperial 
functions as the Merchant Tailors' Company or the New River 
Company — should be intrusted with the sovereignty of a larger 
population, the disposal of a larger clear revenue, the command of 
* larger army, thaji are under the direct management of %\fi 



256 EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 

Executive Government of the United Kingdom. But what con- 
stitution can we give to our Indian Empire which shall not be 
strange — which shall not be anomalous ? That Empire is itself the 
strangest of all political anomalies. That a handful of adventurers 
from an island in the Atlantic should have subjugated a vast 
country divided from the place of their birth by half the globe — a 
country which at no very distant period was merely the subject of 
fable to the nations of Europe — a country never before violated by 
the most renowned of Western Conquerors — a country which 
Trajan never entered — a country lying beyond the point where the 
phalanx of Alexander refused to proceed ; — that we should govern 
a territory 10,000 miles from us — a territory larger and more 
populous than Fiance, Spain, Italy, and Germany put together — a 
territory, the present clear revenue of which exceeds the present 
clear revenue of any state in the world, France excepted — a 
territory, inhabited by men, differing from us in race, colour, 
language, manners, morals, religion ;— these are prodigies to 
which the world has seen nothing similar. Reason is confounded. 
We interrogate the past in vain. General rules are almost useless 
where the whole is one vast exception. The Company is an 
anomaly ; but it is part of a system whei-e every thing is anomaly. 
It is the strangest of all governments: but it is designed for the 
strangest of all Empires. 

If we discard the Company, we must find a substitute : and 
take what substitute we may, we shall find ourselves unable t< 
give any reason for believing that the body which we have put ir 
the room of the Company is likely to acquit itself of its duties 
better than the Company. Commissioners appointed by the King 
during pleasure would be no check on the Crown ; Commissioners 
appointed by the King or by Parliament for life, would always be 
appointed by the political party which might be uppermost, and if 
a change of Administration took place, would harass the new 
Government with the most vexatious opposition. The plan 



EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 257 

suggested by the right hon. Gentleman, the member for Mont- 
gomeryshire, is I think the very worst that I have ever heard. 
He would have Directors nominated every four years by the Crown. 
Is it not plain that these Directors would always be appointed from 
among the supporters of the Ministry for the time being — that their 
situations would depend on the permanence of that Ministry — that 
therefore all their power and patronage would be employed for the 
purpose of propping that Ministry, and, in case of a change, for the 
purpose of molesting those who might succeed to power — that they 
would be subservient while their friends were in, and factious when 
their friends were out? How would Lord Grey's Ministry have 
been situated if the whole body of Directors had been nominated 
bv the Duke of Wellington in 1830? I mean no imputation on 
the Duke of Wellington. If the present Ministers had to nominate 
Di lectors for four years, they would, I have no doubt, nominate 
men who would give no small trouble to the Duke of Wellington 
if he were to return to office. What we want is a body inde- 
pendent of the Government, and no more than independent — not a 
tool of the Treasury — not a tool of the opposition. No new plan 
which I have heard proposed would give us such a body. The 
Company, strange as its constitution may be, is such a body. It 
is, as a corporation, neither Whig nor Tory, neither high-church 
nor low-church. It cannot be charged with having been for or 
against the Catholic Bill, for or against the Reform Bill. It has 
constantly acted with a view, not to English politics but to Indian 
politics. We have seen the country convulsed by faction. We 
have seen Ministers driven from office bv this House — Parliament 
dissolved in anger — general elections of unprecedented turbulence 
— debates of unprecedented interest. We have seen the two branches 
of the Legislature placed in direct opposition to each other. We 
have seen the advisers of the Crown dismissed one day, and 
brought back the next day on the shoulders of the people. And 
amidst all these agitating events the Company has preserved strict 



258 EAST-INDIA COMFANy's CHARTER RILL. 

and unsuspected neutrality. This is, I think, an inestimable advan- 
tage ; and it is an advantage which we must altogether forego, if 
we consent to adopt any of the schemes which I have heard 
proposed on the other side of the House. 

We must judge of the Indian government, as of all other 
governments, by its practical effects. According to the hun. 
member for Sheffield, India is ill-governed ; and the whole fault 
is with the Company. Innumerable accusations, great and small, 
are brought by him against their administration. They are fond 
of war. They are fond of dominion. The taxation is burthensome. 
The laws are undigested. The roads are rough. The post goes on 
foot. And for everything the Company is answerable. From the 
dethronement of the Mogul princes to the mishaps of Sir Charles 
Metcalfe's courier, every disaster that has taken place in the East 
during sixty years is laid to the charge of this unfortunate Cor- 
poration. And the inference is, that all the power which they 
possess ought to be taken out of their hands, and transferred at 
once to the Crown. 

Now, Sir, it seems to me that for all the evils which the hon. 
Gentleman has so pathetically recounted, the Ministers of the 
Crown are as much to blame as the Company — nay, much more 
so. For the Board of Control could, without the consent of the 
Directors, have redressed those evils; and the Directors most 
certainly could not have redressed them without the consent of the 
Board of Control. Take the case of that frightful grievance which 
seems to have made the deepest impression on the mind of the 
hon. Gentleman — the slowness of the mail. Why, Sir, if my 
light hon. friend, the President of our Board, thought fit, he 
might direct me to write to the Court and require them to frame 
a dispatch on that subject. If the Court disobeyed, he might 
himself frame a dispatch ordering Lord William Bentinck to put 
the dawks all over Bengal on hoi'seback. If the Court refused to 
send out this dispatch, the Board could apply to the King's Bench 



E AST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 250 

for a mandamus. If, on the other hand, the Directors wished t<> 
accelerate the journeys of the mail, and the Board were adverse to 
the project, the Directors could do nothing at all. For all measures 
of internal policy the servants of the King are at least as deeply 
responsible as the Company. For all measures of foreign policy 
the servants of the King, and they alone, are responsible. I was 
surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman accuse the Directors ot 
insatiable ambition and rapacity, when he must know that no 
act of aggression on any native state can be committed by the 
Company without the sanction of the Board, and that, in fact, the 
Board has repeatedly approved of warlike measures, which were 
strenuously opposed by the Company. He must know, in par- 
ticular, that, during the energetic and splendid Administration ot 
the Marquess Wellesley, the Company was all for peace, and the 
Board all for conquest. If a line of conduct which the hon. 
Gentleman thinks unjustifiable, has been followed by the Min- 
isters of the Crown in spite of the remonstrances of the Directors, 
this is surely a strange reason for turning off the Directors, and 
giving the whole power unchecked to the Crown. 

The hon. Member tells us that India, under the present system, 
is not so rich and flourishing as she was 200 years ago. Really, 
Sir, I doubt whether we are in possession of sufficient data to 
enable us to form a judgment on that point. But the matter is of 
little importance. We ought to compare India under our Govern 
ment, not with India under Acbar and his immediate successors, 
but with India as we found it. Tiie calamities through which 
that country passed during the interval between the fall of the 
Mogul power and the establishment of the "English supremacy 
were sufficient to throw the people back whole centuries. It 
would surely be unjust to say; that Alfred was a bad king because 
Britain, under his government* was not so rich or so civilized as 
\i the time of the Romans. 

^•liat state, then, did we find Tndia? And what have we 



260 EAST-INDIA COMPANY 4 S CHARTER fiftt. 

made iLclia ? We found society throughout that vast country in 
a state to which history scarcely furnishes a parallel. The nearest 
parallel would perhaps be the state of Europe during the fifth 
century. The Mogul empire in the time of the successors of 
Aurungzebe, like the Roman empire in the time of the successors 
of Theodosius, was sinking under the vices of its internal adminis- 
tration, and under the assaults of barbarous invaders. At Delhi, 
as at Ravenna, there was a mock sovereign, a mere pageant 
immured in a gorgeous state prison. He was suffered to indulge 
in every sensual pleasure. He was adored with servile prostrations. 
He assumed and bestowed the most magnificent titles. But, in 
fact, he was a mere puppet in the hands of some ambitious subject. 
While the Honorii and Augustuli of the East, surrounded by their 
fawning eunuchs, revelled and dozed without knowing or caring 
what might pass beyond the walls of their palace gardens, the 
provinces had ceased to respect a government which could neither 
punish nor protect them. Society was a chaos. Its restless and 
shifting elements formed themselves every moment into some new 
combination, which the next moment dissolved. In the course of 
a single generation a hundred dynasties grew up, flourished, 
decayed, were extinguished, were forgotten. Every adventurer 
who could muster a troop of horse might aspire to a throne. 
Every palace was every year the scene of conspiracies, treasons, 
revolutions, parricides. Meanwhile a rapid succession of Alarics 
and Attiias passed over the defenceless empire. A Persian invader 
penetrated to Delhi, and carried back in triumph the most precious 
treasures of the House of Tamerlane. The Afghan soon followed, 
by the same track, to glean whatever the Persian had spared. The 
Jauts established themselves on the Jumna. The Seiks devastated 
Lahore. Every part of India, from Tanjore to the Himalayas, 
was laid under contribution by the Mahrattas. The people were 
ground down to the dust by the oppressor without and the op 
pressor within ; by the robber from whom the Nabob was unable 



EAST-INDIA COMPANY S CHARTER BILL. 



$6i 



to protect them, by the Nabob who took whatever the robber had 
\eft to them. All the evils of despotism, and all the evils of 
anarchy, pressed at once on that miserable race. They knew 
nothing of government but its exactions. Desolation was in the 
imperial cities, and famine ail along the banks of their broad and 
redundant rivers. It seemed that a few more years would suffice 
to efface all traces of the opulence and civilization of an earlier 
age. 

Such was the state of India when the Company began to take 
part in the disputes of its ephemeral sovereigns. About eighty 
years have elapsed since we appeared as auxiliaries in a contest 
between two rival families for the sovereignty of a small corner of 
the Peninsula. From that moment commenced a great, a stupen- 
dous process — the reconstruction of a decomposed society. Two 
generations have passed away ; and the process is complete. The 
scattered fragments of the empire of Aurungzebe have been 
united in an empire stronger and more closely knit together than 
that which Aurungzebe ruled. The power of the new sovereigns 
penetrates their dominions more completely, and is far more 
implicitly obeyed, than was that of the proudest princes of the 
Mogul dynasty. 

It is true, that the early history of this great revolution L 
chequered with guilt and shame. It is true that the founders of 
onr Indian empire too often abused the strength which they derived 
from superior energy and superior knowledge. It is true that 
with some of the highest qualities of the race from which they 
sprang, they combined some of the worst defects of the race over 
which they ruled. How should it have been otherwise ? Born in 
humble stations, accustomed to earn a slender maintenance by 
obscure industry, they found themselves transformed in a few 
months from clerks drudging over desks, or captains in marching 
regiments, into statesmen and generals, with armies at their 
command, with the revenues of kingdoms at their disposal, with 



26*2 EAST-INDIA COMPANY*S CHARTER BILt. 

power to make and depose sovereigns at their pleasure. The) 
were what it was natural that men should be who had been 
raised by so rapid an ascent to so dizzy an eminence, profuse and 
rapacious, imperious and corrupt. 

It is true, then, that there was too much foundation for the 
representations of those satirists and dramatists who held up the 
character of the English Nabob to the derision and hatred of a 
former generation. It is true that some disgraceful intrigues, some 
unjust and cruel wars, some instances of odious perfidy and avarice 
stain the annals of our Eastern empire. It is true that the duties 
of government and legislation were long wholly neglected or 
carelessly performed. It is true that when the new rulers at length 
began to apply themselves in earnest to the discharge of their 
high functions, they committed the errors natural to rulers who 
were but imperfectly acquainted with the language and manners 
of their subjects. It is true that some measures, which were 
dictated by the purest and most benevolent feelings, have not 
been attended by the desired success. It is true that India suffers 
to this day from a heavy burthen of taxation, and from a defective 
system of law. It is true, I fear, that in those states which are 
connected with us by subsidiary alliance, all the evils of oriental 
despotism have too frequently shown themselves in their most 
loathsome and destructive form. 

All this is true. Yet in the history and in the present state of 
our Indian empire I see ample reason for exultation and for a 
good hope. 

I see that we have established order where we found confusion. 
I see that the petty dynasties which were generated by the 
corruption of the great Mahometan empire, and which, a century 
ago, kept all India in constant agitation, have been quelled by one 
overwhelming power. I see that the predatory tribes who, in the 
middle of the last century, passed annually over the harvests of 
India with the destructive rapidity of a hurricane, have quailed 



EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 263 

before the valour of a braver and sterner race — Lave been van- 
quished, scattered, hunted to their strongholds, and either 
exterminated by the English sword, or compelled to exchange 
the pursuits of rapine for those of industry. 

1 look back for many years ; and I see scarcely a trace of the 
^ices which blemished the splendid fame of the first conquerors of 
Bengal. I see peace studiously preserved. I see faith inviolably 
maintained towards feeble and dependent states. I see confidence 
gradually infused into the minds of suspicious neighbours. I see 
the horrors of war mitigated by the chivalrous and Christian spirit of 
Europe. I see examples of moderation and clemency, such as I 
should seek in vain in the annals of any other victorious and 
dominant nation. I see captive tyrants, whose treachery and 
cruelty might have excused a severe retribution, living in security, 
comfort, and dignity, under the protection of the government 
which they laboured to destroy. 

I see a large body of civil and military functionaries resembling 
in nothing but capacity and valour those adventurers who seventy 
years ago came hither, laden with wealth and infamy, to parade 
before our fathers the plundered treasures of Bengal and Tanjore. 
I reflect with pride that to the doubtful splendour which surrounds 
the memory of Hastings and of Clive, we can oppose the spotless 
glory of Eiphinstone and Monro. I observe with reverence and 
delight the honourable poverty which is the evidence of a rectitude 
firmly maintained amidst strong temptations. I rejoice to see my 
countrymen, after ruling millions of subjects, after commanding 
victorious armies, after dictating terms of peace at the gates of 
hostile capitals, after administering the revenues of great provinces, 
after judging the causes of wealthy Zemindars, after residing at 
the Courts of tributary Kings, return to their native land with no 
more than a decent competence. 

I see a government anxiously bent on the public good. Even 
in its errors I recognize a paternal feeling towards the great people 



264 EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 

committed to its charge. I see toleration strictly maintained. 
Yet I see bloody and degrading superstitions gradually losing 
their power. I see the morality, the philosophy, the taste of 
Europe, beginning to produce a salutary effect on the hearts and 
understandings of our subjects. I see the public mind of India, 
that public mind which we found debased and contracted by the 
worst forms of political and religious tyranny, expanding itself to 
just and noble views of the ends of government and of the social 
duties of man. 

I see evils ; but I see the government actively employed in the 
work of remedying those evils. The taxation is heavy ; but the 
work of retrenchment is unsparingly pursued. The mischiefs 
arising from the system of subsidiary alliance are great; but the 
rulers of India are fully aware of those mischiefs, and are engaged 
in guarding against them. Wherever they now interfere for. the 
purpose of supporting a native government, they interfere also 
for the purpose of reforming it. 

Seeing these things, then, am I prepared to discard the Com- 
pany as an organ of government? I am not. Assuredly I wil. 
never shrink from innovation where I see reason to believe that 
innovation will be improvement. That the present Government 
does not shrink from innovations which it considers as improve- 
ments, the measure now before the House sufficiently shows. 
But surely the burthen of the proof lies on the innovators. 
They are bound to lay some ground ; to show that there is a fair 
probability of obtaining some advantage before they call upon us to 
take up the foundations of th6 Indian government. I have no 
superstitious veneration for the Court of Directors or the Court of 
Proprietors. Find me a better Council ; find me a better con- 
stituent body; and I am ready for a change. But of all the 
substitutes for the Company which have hitherto been suggested, 
not one has been proved to be better than the Company; and 
most of tjieui I could, I think easily prove to be worse, CirQUjj* 



EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 265 

stances might force us to hazard a change. If the Company were 
to refuse to accept of the government unless we would grant 
pecuniary terms which T thought extravagant, or unless we gave 
up the clauses in this Bill which permit Europeans to hold landed 
property, and natives to hold office, I would take them at their 
word. But I will not discard them in the mere rage of experi- 
ment. 

Do I call the government of India a perfect government ? Very 
far from it. No nation can be perfectly well governed till it is 
competent to govern itself. I compare the Indian government 
with other governments of the same class, with despotisms, with 
military despotisms, with foreign military despotism? ; and I fine 
none that approaches it in excellence. I compare it with the 
government of the Roman provinces — with the government of the 
Spanish colonies — and I am proud of my country and my age. 
Here are a hundred millions of people under the absolute rule of a 
few strangers, differing from them physically — differing from them 
morally — mere Mamelukes, not born in the country which they 
rule, not meaning to lay their bones in it. If you require me to 
make this government as good as that of England, France, or the 
United States of America, I own frankly that I can do no such 
thing. Reasoning a priori, I should have come to the conclusion 
that such a government must be a horrible tyranny. It is a source 
of constant amazement to me that it is so good as I find it to be. 
I will not, therefore, in a case in which I have neither principles 
nor precedents to guide me, pull down the existing system on 
account of its theoretical defects. For I know that any system 
which I could put in its place would be equally condemned by 
theory, while it would not be equally sanctioned by experience. 

Some change in the constitution of the Company was, as I have 
shown, rendered inevitable by the opening of the China Trade; 
and it was the duty of the Government to take care that the 

change should not be prejudicial to India. There were manv 
vol. i. 12 



$$& EAST-INDtA C0MPANY*S CHARTER BILL. 

ways in which the compromise between commerce and territory 
might have been effected. We might have taken the assets, and 
paid a sum down, leaving the Company to invest that sum as 
they chose. We might have offered English security with a lower 
interest. We might have taken the course which the late Govern- 
ment designed to take. We might have left the Company in 
possession of the means of carrying on its trade in competition 
with private merchants. My firm belief is, that, if this course had 
been taken, the Company must, in a very few years, have aban- 
doned the trade or the trade would have ruined the Company. Tt 
was not, however, solely or principally by regard for the interest of 
the Company, or of the English merchants generally, that the 
Government was guided on this occasion. The course which 
appeared to us the most likely to promote the interests of our 
Eastern Empire was to make the proprietors of India stock 
creditors of the Indian territory. Their interest will thus be in a 
great measure the same with the interest of the people whom they 
are to rule. Their income will depend on the revenues of their 
empire. The revenues of their empire will depend on the manner 
in which the affairs of that empire are administered. We furnish 
them with the strongest motives to watch over the interests of the 
cultivator and the trader, to maintain peace, to carry on with 
vigour the work of retrenchment, to detect and punish extortion 
and corruption. Though they live at a distance from India — 
though few of them have ever seen or may ever see the people 
whom they rule — they will have a great stake in the happiness of 
their subjects. If their misgovernment should produce disorder 
in the finances, they will themselves feel the effects of that disor- 
der in their own household expenses. I believe this to be, next 
to a representative constitution, the constitution which is the best 
security for good government. A representative constitution 
India cannot at present have. And we have, therefore, I think, 
given her the best constitution of which she is capable. 



EAST-INDIA COMPANY 8 CHARTER BILL. 26"/ 

One word as to the new arrangement- which we propose with 
respect to the patronage. It is intended to introduce the principle 
of competition in the disposal of writerships ; and from this change 
I cannot but anticipate the happiest results. The civil servants of 
the Company are undoubtedly a highly respectable body of men ; 
and, in that body, as in every large body, there are some persons 
pf very eminent ability. I rejoice most cordially to see this. I 
rejoice to see that the standard of morality is so high in England, 
that intelligence is so generally diffused through England, that 
young persons who are taken from the mass of society, by favour 
and not by merit, and who are therefore only fair samples of the 
mass, should, when placed in situations of high importance, be so 
seldom found wanting. But it is not the less true, that India is 
entitled to the service of the best talents which England can spare. 
That tlie average of intelligence and virtue is very high in this 
county, is matter for honest exultation. But it is no reason for 
employing average men where you can obtain superior men. 
Consider too, Sir, how rapidly the public mind of India is 
advancing, how much attention is already paid by the higher 
classes of the natives to those intellectual pursuits on the cultiva- 
tion of which the superiority of the European race to the rest of 
mankind principally depends. Sure'ly, under such circumstances, 
from motives of selfish policy, if from no higher motive, we ought 
to fill the Magistracies of our Eastern Empire with men who may 
do honour to their country — with men who may represent the best 
part of the English nation. This, Sir, is our object ; and we be- 
lieve, that by the plan which is now proposed this object will be 
attained. It is proposed that for every vacancy in the civil service 
four candidates shall be named, and the best candidate elected by 
examination. We conceive that, under this system, the persons 
sent out will be young men above par — young men superior either 
in talents or in diligence to the mass. It is said, I know, that 
examinations in Latin, in Greek, au4 in mathematics, are no tests 



268 EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 

of what men will prove, to be in life. I am perfectly aware, that 
they are not infallible tests ; but that they are tests I confidently 
maintain. Look at every walk of life — at this House — at the other 
House— at the Bar— at the Bench — at the Church — and see whether 
it be not true, that those who attain high distinction in the world are 
generally men who were distinguished in their academic career. 
Indeed, Sir, this objection would prove far too much even for those 
who use it. It would prove, that there is no use at all in 
education. Why should we put boys out of their way? Why 
should we force a lad, who would much rather fly a kite or trundle 
a hoop, to learn his Latin Grammar? Why should we keep a 
young man to his Thucydides or his Laplace, when he would 
much rather be shooting ? Education would be mere useless 
torture, if, at two or three and twenty, a man who has neglected 
his studies were exactly on a par with a man who has applied 
himself to them — exactly as likely to perform all the offices of 
public life with credit to himself and with advantage to society. 
Whether the English system of education be good or bad is not 
now the question. Perhaps I may think that too much time is 
given to the ancient languages and to the abstract sciences. But 
what then ? Whatever be the languages — whatever be the sciences, 
which it is, in any age or country, the fashion to teach, those who 
become the greatest proficients in those languages and those 
sciences, will generally be the flower of the youth — the most acute 
— the most industrious — the most ambitious of honourable dis- 
tinctions. If the Ptolemaic system were taught at Cambridge, 
instead of the Newtonian, the senior wrangler would nevertheless 
be in general a superior man to the wooden spoon. If, instead of 
learning Greek, we learned the Cherokee, the man who understood 
the Cherokee best, who made the most correct and melodious 
Cherokee verses — who comprehended most accurately the effect of 
the Cherokee particles — would generally be a superior man to him 
who was destitute of these accomplishments. If astrology were 



EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 265 

taught at our Universities, the young man who cast nativities best 
would generally turn out a superior man. If alchymy were taught, 
the young man who showed most activity in the pursuit of the 
philosopher's stone would generally turn out a superior man. 

I will only add one other observation on this subject. Although 
I am inclined to think that too much attention is paid in the 
education of English gentleman to the dead languages, I conceive, 
that when you are choosing young men to fill situations for which 
the very first and most indispensable qualification is familiarity 
with foreign languages, it would be difficult to find a better test 
of their fitness than their classical acquirements. 

Some persons have expressed doubts as to the possibility of 
procuring fair examinations. I am quite sure, that no person 
who has been either at Cambridge or at Oxford can entertain 
such doubts. I feel, indeed, that I ought to apologize for even 
noticing an objection so frivolous. 

Next to the opening of the China trade, the change most eagerly 
demanded by the English people was, that the restrictions on the 
admission of Europeans to India should be removed. In this 
measure there are undoubtedly very great advantages. The chief 
advantage is, I think, the improvement which the minds of oui 
native subjects may be expected to derive from free intercourse 
with a people far advanced beyond themselves in intellectual 
cultivation. I cannot deny, however, that the advantages of this 
great change are attended with some danger. 

The danger is that the new comers, belonging to the ruling 
nation, resembling in colour, in language, in manners, those who 
hold supreme military and political power, and differing in all 
these respects from the great mass of the population, may consider 
themselves as a superior class, and may trample on the indigenous 
race. Hitherto there have been strong restraints on Europeans 
resident in India. Licences were not easily obtained. Those 
residents wfco were in the service of the Company had obvious 



270 EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 

motives for conducting themselves with propriety. If the}'' incurred 
the serious displeasure of the Government, their hopes of promo- 
tion were blighted. Even those who were not in the public ser- 
vice, were subject to the formidable power which the Government 
possessed of banishing them at its pleasure. 

The licence of the Government will now no longer be necessary 
to persons who desire to reside in the settled provinces of India. 
The power of arbitrary deportation is withdrawn. Unless, there- 
fore, we mean to leave the natives exposed to the tyranny and 
insolence of every profligate adventurer who may visit the East, we 
must place the European under the same power which legislates 
for the Hindoo. No man loves political freedom more than I. 
But a privilege, enjoyed by a few individuals in the midst of a vast 
population who do not enjoy it, ought not to be called freedom. 
It is tyranny. In the West Indies I have not the least doubt that 
the existence of the Trial by Jury and of Legislative Assemblies 
has tended to make the condition of the slaves worse than it would 
otherwise have been. Or, to go to India itself for an instance, 
though I fully believe that a mild penal code is better than a 
severe penal code, the worst of all systems was surely that of 
having a mild code for the Brahmins, who sprang from the head 
of the Creator, while there was a severe code for the Sudras, who 
sprang from his feet. India has suffered enough already from the 
distinction of castes, and from the deeply rooted prejudices which 
those distinctions have engendered. God forbid that we should 
inflict on her the curse of a new caste, that we should send her a 
new breed of Brahmins, authorized to treat all the native popu- 
lation as Pariahs. 

With a view to the prevention of this evil, we propose to give 
to the supreme government the power of legislating for Europeans 
as well as for natives. We propose that the regulations of the 
Government shall bind t]»e Kind's Court as they bind all other 
Qggrtej and that registration \>¥ Ui° JH-4g^l & tbo Kings Cour^ 



4AST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 271 

shall no longer be necessary to give validity to those regulations 
within the towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. 

I could scarcely, Sir, believe my ears when I heard this partot 
our plan condemned in another place. I should have thought, 
that it would have been received with peculiar favour in that 
quarter where it has met with the most severe condemnation. 
What, at present, is the case? If the Supreme Court and the 
Government differ on a question of jurisdiction, or of legislation 
within the towns which are the seats of Government, there is 
absolutely no umpire but the Imperial Parliament. The device of 
putting one wild elephant between two tame ones was ingenious; 
but it may not always be practicable. Suppose a tame elephant 
between two wild ones, or suppose, that the whole herd should 
run wild together. The thing is not without example. And is it 
not most unjust and ridiculous that on one side of a ditch the edict 
of the Governor General should have the force of law, and that on 
the other side it should be of no effect unless registered by the 
Judges of the Supreme Court ? If the registration be a security for 
good legislation, we are bound to give that security to all classes 
of our subjects. f the registration be not a security for good 
legislation, why require it ? Why give it to a million of them, and 
withhold it from the other ninety-nine millions ? Is the system 
good ? Extend it. Is it bad ? Abolish it. But in the name of 
common sense do not leave it as it is. It is as absurd as our old 
law of sancti.ary. The system of imprisonment for debt may be 
good or bad. But no man in his senses can approve of the ancient 
system under which a debtor who might be arrested in Fleet 
Street was safe as soon as he had scampered into Whitefiiars. 
Just in the same way, doubts may fairly be entertained about the 
expediency of allowing four or five persons to make laws for India ; 
but to allow them to make laws for all India without the Mah- 
ratta ditch, and to except Calcutta, is the height of absurdity. 

I say, therefore, either enlarge the power of the Supreme Court 



272 EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER Btti. 

and give it a general veto on laws, or enlarge the power of the 
Government, and make its regulations binding on all Courts 
without distinction. The former course no person has ventured to 
propose. To the latter course objections have been made, — but 
objections which to me, I must own, seem altogether frivolous. It 
is acknowledged, that of late years inconvenience has arisen from 
the relation in which the Supreme Court stands to the Government. 

But, it is said, that Court was originally instituted for the pro- 
tection of natives against Europeans. The wise course would, 
therefore, be to restore its original character. 

Now, Sir, the fact is, that the Supreme Court has never been so 
mischievous as during the first ten years of its power, or so 
respectable as it has lately been. Everybody who knows any- 
thing of its early history knows, that for a considerable time after 
its institution, it was the terror of Bengal, the scourge of native 
informants, the screen of European delinquents, a convenient tool 
of the Government for all purposes of evil, an insurmountable ob- 
stacle to the Government in all undertakings for the public 
good ; — that its proceedings were made up of pedantry, cruelty, 
and corruption ; — that its disputes with the Government were at 
one time on the point of breaking up the whole fabric of society ; 
and that a convulsion was averted only by the dexterous policy of 
Warren Hastings, who at last bought off the opposition of the 
Chief Justice for £8,000 a-year. It is notorious, that while the 
Supreme Court opposed Hastings in all his best measures, it was a 
thorough-going accomplice in his worst — that it took part in the 
most scandalous of those proceedings which fifty years ago roused 
the indignation of Parliament and of the country — that it assisted 
in the spoliation of the princesses of Oude — that it passed 
sentence of death on Nuncomar. And this is the Court which 
we are to restore from its present state of degeneracy to its original 
purity. This is the protection .which we are to give to the natives 
against the Europeans. Sir, so far is it from being true that the 



EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BlLt. 273 

character of the Supreme Court has deteriorated, that it lias, 
perhaps, improved more thau any other institution in India. But 
the evil lies deep in the nature of the institution itself. The Judges 
have in our time deserved the greatest respect. Their judgment 
and integrity have done much to mitigate the vices of the system. 
The worst charge that can be brought against any of them is that 
of pertinacity — disinterested, conscientious pertinacity — in error. 
The real evil is in the state of the law. You have two supreme 
powers in India. There is no arbitrator except a Legislature ten 
thousand miles off. Such a system is in the face of it an absurdity 
in politics, My wonder is, not that this system has several times 
been on the point of producing fatal consequences to the peace and 
resources of India, — these, I think, are the words in which Warren 
Hastings describes the effect of the contest between his Govern- 
ment and the Judges — but that it has not actually produced such 
consequences. The most distinguished members of the Indian 
Government — the most distinguished Judges of the Supreme 
C our t — call upon you to reform this system. Sir Charles Metcalfe, 
Sir Charles Grey, represent with equal urgency the expediency of 
having one single paramount council armed with legislative power. 
The admission of Europeans to India renders it absolutely neces- 
sary not to delay our decision. The effect of that admission would 
be to raise a hundred questions — to produce a hundred contests 
between the council and the judicature. The Government would 
be paralysed at the precise moment at which all its energy was 
required. While the two equal powers were acting in opposite 
directions, the whole machine of the state would stand still. The 
Europeans would be uncontrolled ; the natives would be unpro- 
tected. The consequences I will not pretend to foresee. Every 
thing beyond is darkness and confusion. 

Having given to the Government supreme legislative power, we 
next propose to give to it for a time the assistance of a Commission 

for the purpose of digesting and reforming the laws ?f India, so 

12* 



2?4 EA6t-lftt>iA COMPANY'S CttARl'EIl MLt. 

that those laws may, as soon as possible, be formed into a code 
Gentlemen of whom I wish to speak with the highest respect 
have expressed a doubt whether India be at present in a fit state to 
receive a benefit v^hich is not yet enjoyed by this free and highly 
civilized country. Sir, I can allow to this argument very little 
weight beyond that which it derives from the personal authority 
of those who use it. For, in the first place, our freedom and our 
high civilization render this improvement, desirable as it must 
always be, less indispensably necessary to us than to our Indian 
subjects : and in the next place our freedom and civilization, I 
fear, render it far more difficult for us to obtain this benefit for 
ourselves than to bestow it on them. 

I believe that no country ever stood so much in need of a code 
■)f laws as India, and I believe also that there never was a country 
in which the want might so easily be supplied. I said, that there 
were many points of analogy between the state of that country 
after the fall of the Mogul power, and the state of Europe after the 
fall of the Roman empire. In one respect the analogy is very 
striking. As in Europe then, so in India now, there are, several 
systems of law widely differing from each other, but co-existing 
and co-equal. The indigenous population has its own laws. Each 
of the successive races of conquerors has brought with it its own 
peculiar jurisprudence : the Mussulman his Koran and its innume- 
rable commentators^ — the Englishman his Statute-Book and his 
Term Reports. As there were established in Italy, at one and the 
same time, the Roman law, the Lombard law, the Ripuarian law, 
the Bavarian law, and the Salic law, so we have now in our Eastern 
empire Hindoo law, Mahometan law, Parsee law, English law, perpe- 
tually mingling with each other, and disturbing each other ; varying 
with the person, varying with the place. In one and the same cause 
the process and pleadings are in the fashion of one nation, the 
judgment is according to the laws of another. An issue is evolved 
according to the rules of Westminster, and decided according to 



BAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 275 

those of Benares. The only Mahometan book in the nature of a 
code is the Koran ; — the only Hindoo book the Institutes. Every 
body who knows those books, knows that they provide for a very 
small part of the cases which must arise in every community. All 
beyond them is comment and tradition. Our regulations in civii 
matters do not define rights ; they merely establish remedies. If 
a point of Hindoo law arises, the Judge calls on the Pundit for an 
opinion. If a point of Mahometan law arises, the Judge applies to 
the Cauzee. What the integrity of these functionaries is, we may 
learn from Sir William Jones. That eminent man declared, tha 
he could not answer it to his conscience to decide any point of law 
on the faith of a Hindoo expositor. Sir Thomas Strange confirms 
this declaration. Even if there were no suspicion of corruption on 
the part of the interpreters of the law, the science which they 
profess is in such a state of confusion that no reliance can be 
placed on their answers. Sir Francis Macnaghten tells us, that it 
is a delusion to fancy that there is any known and fixed law under 
which the Hindoo people live ; that texts may be produced on any 
side of any question ; that expositors equal in authority perpetually 
contradict each other; that the obsolete law is perpetually con- 
founded with the law actually in force, and that the first lesson to 
be impressed on a functionary who has to administer Hindoo law 
is, that it is vain to think of extracting certainty from the books of 
the jurists. The consequence is, that in practice the decisions of 
the tribunals are altogether arbitrary. What is administered is 
not law, but a kind of rude and capricious equity. I asked an able 
and excellent Judge lately returned from India how one of our 
Zillah Courts would decide several legal questions of great im- 
portance — questions not involving considerations of religion or of 
caste — mere questions of commercial law. He told me, that it 
was a mere lottery. He knew how he should himself decide 
them. But he knew nothing more. I asked a most distinguished 
civil servant of the Company, with reference to t4e clause iu this 



2*TG EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILIa 

Act abolishing slavery, whether at present if a dancing girl ran 
away from her master, the Judo'e would force her to go back. 
" Some Judges,'' he said, "send a girl back; others set her at 
liberty. The whole is a mere matter of chance. Every thins 
depends on the temper of the individual judge." 

Even in this country, we have had complaints of judge-made 
law ; even in this country, where the standard of morality is 
higher than in almost any other part of the world — where, during 
several generations, not one depositary of our legal traditions has 
incurred the suspicion of personal corruption — where there are 
popular institutions — where every decision is watched by a shrewd 
and learned audience — where there is an intelligent and observant 
public — where every remarkable case is fully reported in ahundred 
newspapers — where, in short, there is every thing which can 
mitigate the evils of such a system. But judge-made law, where 
there is an absolute government and a lax morality — where thert 
is no bar and no public — is a curse and a scandal not to be 
endured. It is time that the Magistrate should know what law he 
is to administer — that the subject should know under what law he 
is to live. We do not mean that all the people of India should 
live under the same law : far from it : there is not a word in the 
Bill — there was not a word in my right hon. friend's speech — 
susceptible of such an interpretation. We know how desirable that 
object is; but we also know that it is unattainable. We know 
that respect must be paid to feelings generated by differences of 
religion, of nation, and of caste. Much, I am persuaded, may be 
done to assimilate the different systems of law without wounding 
those feelings. But, whether we assimilate those systems or not, 
let us ascertain them, let us digest them. We propose no rash 
innovation ; we wish to give no shock to the prejudices of any 
part of our subjects. Our principle is simply this— uniformity 
where you can have it— diversity where you must have it — but in 
all cases certainty. 



KA8T-1NDIA COMPANY^ CHARTER BILL. 2*? 7 

As I believe that India stands more in need of a code than any 
other country in the world, I believe also that there is no country 
on which that great benefit can more easily be conferred. A code 
is almost the only blessing — perhaps it is the only blessing which 
absolute governments are better fitted to confer on a nation than 
popular governments. The work of digesting a vast and artificial 
system of unwritten jurisprudence, is far more easily performed, 
and far better performed, by few minds than by many — by a 
Napoleon than by a Chamber of Deputies and a Chamber of 
Peers — by a government like that of Prussia or Denmark, than by 
a government like that of England. A quiet knot of two or three 
veteran jurists is an infinitely better machinery for such a purpose 
than a large popular assembly divided, as such assemblies almost 
always arc, into adverse factions. This seems to me, therefore, to 
be precisely that point of time at which the advantage of a com- 
plete written code of laws may most easily be conferred on India. 
It is a work which cannot be well performed in an age of bar- 
barism — which cannot without great difficulty be performed in an 
age of freedom. It is the work which especially belongs to a 
government like that of India — to an enlightened and paternal 
despotism. 

I have detained the House so long, Sir, that I will defer what I 
had to say on some parts of this measure — important parts, indeed, 
but far less important, as I think, than those to which I have 
adverted, till we are in Committee. There is, however, one part of 
the Bill on which, after what has recently passed elsewhere, I feel 
myself irresistibly impelled to say a few words. I allude to that 
wise, that benevoltnt, that noble clause, which enacts that no 
native of our Indian empire shall, by reason of his colour, his 
descent, or his religion, be incapable of holding office. At the 
risk of being called by that nickname which is regarded as the 
most opprobrious of all nicknames, by men of selfish hearts and 
contracted minds — at the risk of being called a philosopher— 



1*18 EAST-INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER BILL. 

I mast say tl i at, to the last day of my lite, I shall be proud of 
having been one of those who assisted in the framing of the Bill 
which contains that clause. We are told that the time can never 
come when the natives of India can be admitted to high civil and 
military office. We are told that this is the condition on which 
we hold our power. We are told, that we are bound to confer on 
our subjects — every benefit which they are capable of enjoying? — 
no — which it is in our power to confer on them ? — no — but which 
we can confer on them without hazard to our own domination. 
Against that proposition I solemnly protest as inconsistent alike 
with sound policy and sound morality. 

I am far, very far, from wishing to proceed hastily in this most 
delicate matter. I feel that, for the good of India itself, the 
admission of natives to high office must be effected by slow 
degrees. But that, when the fulness of time is come, when the 
interest of India requires the change, we ought to refuse to make 
that change lest we should endanger our own power ; this is a 
doctrine which I cannot think of without indignation. Govern- 
ments, like men, may buy existence too dear. " Propter vitam 
vivendi perdere causas," is a despicable policy either in individuals 
or in states. In the present case, such a policy would be not only 
despicable, but absurd. The mere extent of empire is not neces- 
sarily an advantage. To many governments it has been cumber- 
some : to some it has been fatal. It will be allowed by every 
statesman of our time, that the prosperity of a community is made 
up of the prosperity of those who compose the community, and 
that it is the most childish ambition to covet dominion which adds 
to no man's comfort or security. To the great trading nation, to the 
great manufacturing nation, no progress which any portion of the 
human race can make in knowledge, in taste for the conveniences 
of life, or in the wealth by w hich those conveniences are produced, 
can be matter of indifference. It is scarcely possible to calculate 
tk% benefits which we might derive from the diffusion of European 



EASf-tNDIA COMPANY'S CriAUTKIi BILL. IT i) 

civilization among the vast population of the East. It would be, 
on the most selfish view of the case, far better for us that the 
people of India were well governed and independent of us, than ill 
governed and subjccu to us — that they were ruled by their own 
kings, but wearing our broadcloth, and working with our cutlery, 
than that they were performing their salams to English collectors 
and English Magistrates, but were too ignorant to value, or too 
poor to buy, English manufactures. To trade with civilized men 
is infinitely more profitable than to govern savages. That would, 
indeed, be a doting wisdom, which, in order that India might 
remain a dependency, would make it an useless and costly 
dependency — which would keep a hundred millions of men from 
being our customers in order that they might continue to be our 
slaves. 

It was, as Bernier tells us, the practice of the miserable tyrants 
whom he found in India, when they dreaded the capacity and 
spirit of some distinguished subject, and yet could not venture to 
murder him, to administer to him a daily dose of the pousta, a 
preparation of opium, the effect of which was in a few months to 
destroy all the bodily and mental powers of the wretch who was 
drugged with it, and to turn him into a helpless idiot. The 
detestable artifice, more horrible than assassination itself, was 
worthy of those who employed it. It is no model for the English 
nation. We shall never consent to administer the pousta to a 
whole community — to stupify and paralyse a great people whom 
God has committed to our charge for the wretched purpose of 
rendering them more amenable to our control. What is that 
power worth which is founded on vice, on ignorance, and on 
misery — which \re can hold only by violating the most sacred 
duties which as governors we owe to the governed — which as a 
people blessed with far more than an ordinary measure of political 
liberty and of intellectual light, we owe to a race debased by 
three thousand years of despotism and priestcraft ? We are free, 



280 EAST-INDIA COMPANY^ CHARTER BILL. 

we are civilized, to little purpose," if we grudge to any portiot 
of the human race an equal measure of freedom and civiliza* 
t.ion. 

Are we to keep the people of India ignorant in order that 
we may keep them submissive ? Or do we think that we cat) give 
them knowledge without awakening ambition ? Or do we mean 
to awaken ambition and to provide it with no legitimate vent? 
Who will answer any of these questions in the affirmative? Yet 
one of them must be answered in the affirmative, by every person 
who maintains that we ought permanently to exclude the natives 
from high office. I have no fears. The path of duty is plain 
before us : and it is also the path of wisdom, of national pros- 
perity, of national honour. 

The destinies of our Indian empire are covered with thick 
darkness. It is difficult to form any conjecture as to the rate 
reserved for a state which resembles no other in history, and which 
forms by itself a separate class of political phenomena. The laws 
which regulate its growth and its decay arc still unknown to us. 
It may be that the public mind of India may expand under onr 
system till it has outgrown that system ; that by good government 
we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government, 
that, having become instructed in European knowledge, they may, 
in some future age, demand European institutions. Whether such 
a day will ever come I know not. But never will I attempt to 
avert or to retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest 
day in English history. To have found a great people sunk in the 
lowest depths of slavery and superstition, to have so ruled them as 
to have made them desirous and capable of all the privileges oi 
citizens, would indeed be a title to glory all our own. The sceptre 
may pass away from us. Unforeseen accidents may derange our 
most profound schemes of policy. Victory may be inconstant to 
cur arms. But there are triumphs which are followed by n© 



EAST-INDIA COMTAN'y's CHARTER BILL. £81 

reverses. There is an empire exempt from all natural causes of 
decay. These triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason over 
barbarism ; that empire is the imperishable empire of our arts and 
oar morals, our literature and our laws. 



282 



MINISTERIAL PLAN FOR THE ABOLITION OF 

SLAVERY* 

july 24, 1833. 

He rose with feelings of regret upon the present occasion. Though 
he had taken no part in the discussion upon this Bill, yet there 
■was uo one who had with more patience watched, or with greater 
anxiety attended to, the provisions of a measure, which he could 
not but consider to contain a great mixture of good and evil. He 
should now express his opinions upon this Bill in general, and 
particularly on those parts in which Amendments had been 
introduced, and to which the lion. Member (Mr. Fowell Buxton) 
had referred. He should discharge his duty, he was afraid, very 
imperfectly, and he would therefore entreat the House to extend 
to him that indulgence on the present occasion which he had 
experienced on former occasions when he had addressed it with 
less harassed feelings, and more confidence than at present. He 
had every disposition not only to do the amplest justice to his 
Majesty's Ministers, but to give them the greatest credit — them, 
with whom he generally acted — for having framed every part of 
this measure with the purest and most benevolent intentions, even 
those parts of which he could not approve. To those parts of 
which he disapproved, he was anxious to state his objection, but, 
previous to doing that, he most solemnly disclaimed any unfriendly 
feeling towards any class of persons whose interests might be 
concerned in the proposed measure. He hoped that he should be 
able to prove, that he was not, on the one hand, disposed to 

* gansard, 3d Series, vol, xix. p. 1202-1209. 



ABOLITION Of sl avert. 283 

sacrifice principle to party, nor on the other, disposed to sacrifice 
the rights of the planters to popular clamour. Of the three objects 
which the Bill was intended to effect, the first had his fullest and 
most unqualified approbation — the abolition of slavery. He 
believed slavery to be the greatest of political evils; and when he 
thought of the horrid state of the slave, he sometimes felt ashamed 
of himself for the enthusiasm he had manifested in removing 
domestic grievances ; such, for example, as the Catholic disabilities. 
They had seen guilt in many ages and in many countries ; but 
where had they seen guilt in the hideous forms in which it had 
for so many years been exhibited in the West-India islands? 
Slavery there had been made to do the work of famine, of pes- 
tilence, and of war combined. It had accomplished more than 
they could accomplish, in putting an end to that disposition to 
increase and multiply which was manifested by the human race in 
every other part of the world. There had been fierce and pro- 
longed wars in Europe, but population went on augmenting ; and 
fresh life filled up the chasms caused by such fields as those of 
Leipzic, Borodino, and Waterloo. Ambition had done all it could 
to destroy ; but it had been assisted by famine and pestilence ; 
but the void which they created was speedily and completely filled 
up. The law of nature was not counteracted. As soon as the 
population became thinned by any powerful physical cause, early 
marriages increased, and the deficiency was soon supplied. In 
the West-India colonies alone was found a society in which the 
number of human beings was continually decreasing without the 
surviving labourers obtaining any advantages. In the West-India 
colonies a state of society existed unparalleled in the history of 
the world. Fully believing in the necessity of demolishing 
slavery, he nevertheless thought, that his Majesty's Government 
had taken the risdit course in the Bill which his rio;ht hon. friend 
had introduced. The only fault which he found with that Bill 
was, that it had a leaning to mitigate an evil which ought to be 



§§4 AfcOttfiON OF SLAVER*. 

demolished altogether. They had made attempts to mitigate 
slavery on former occasions. They had sent out to the negro a 
Church Establishment, while they left him to be bought and sold ■ 
but that mitigation was useless. The object of this Bill, he 
thanked God ! was not a mitigation of that description ; it 
attacked the foundation of the principle of slavery. Slavery was 
not a system which could be improved ; it must be annihilated. 
Slavery was in itself the abuse. The principle of slavery, as 
Montesquieu had observed, was pure unmixed evil. Terror was 
the only motive that could operate upon the slave. Terror was 
the only mode by which the proprietor of the slave could hope to 
guard his own life or to save his wife and daughters from violation. 
If they abstracted terror from the system, the whole fabric of 
slavery was at once destroyed. The introduction of liberty was a 
new principle, not a mitigation of slavery. To mitigate slavery by 
introducing liberty, would be to take away the props without 
supplying pillars. When he heard persons say, that it would be 
madness immediately to put an end to slavery, and at the same 
time declare that it was frightful to continue its cruelties, it 
appeared to him as if they were the most inconsistent of men. 
He could not comprehend the mitigation of slavery. Its abolition 
would give the slave a motive for preserving the order by which 
he was to benefit. In this country where there were no slaves, 
where the lowest labourer was an intelligent being, we could 
afford to connive at the violence of a mob ; we could laugh at 
Political Unions and speeches ; even in cases of actual treason and 
rebellion we could punish the leaders and pardon their followers ; 
but in such'a country as the West Indies, to tell the masters to be 
merciful and moderate, was to tell them to submit to butchery. 
How was it possible that while they gave the negroes religious 
instruction, in order to educate them as men, they could continue 
to treat them as brutes ? Of that part of the Bill, therefore, 
which abolished slavery, he cordially approved. There was 



AfidLiflON OF SLAVERY. 2§5 

another part of the Bill which he knew was most unpopular — lie 
meant the Compensation Clause — to which, however, he gave his 
full consent. He regretted that, on this point, he felt it liis duty 
to oppose those with whom he had generally had the happiness to 
act on this subject; but he was prepared to take his full share :>f 
whatever unpopularity might arise from this part of the Bill. He 
well knew, that there were in this country many excellent persons 
who detested the principle on which compensation to the planters 
was founded. It was not with those persons a question of money. 
They would be quite ready to give the twenty millions or thirty 
millions, or more, as charity, but they were strongly opposed to 
giving it as compensation. For his part, he held that the owners 
of the slaves had a distinct right to this compensation, lie did 
not mean to say, that they had any right as against the slave; 
and if he had no alternative but to choose between the positions — 
that slavery should never be abolished, or that the planter should 
never be compensated, he should have no hesitation in deciding 
for the latter; for highly as he valued the rights of property, he 
could never put them in competition with the right of personal 
liberty. It had been most justly declared, that the property of 
man in his labour was the origin of all property, and ought to be 
held most sacred. Therefore, if there must be robbery at all, he 
would rather rob the planter of his property than the slave of his 
freedom. But to that alternative he was not reduced. AVith the 
question of compensation a slave had nothing to do. The State 
had solemnly sanctioned the property of the planter. The public 
faith had been pledged to its maintenance by proclamation, by 
treaty, by prescription. Could that House consent to violate it ' 
lie had heard that it was maintained that the planter ought to 
receive no compensation, because there ought to be no indemnity 
for the abandonment of crime. He protested against such a 
doctrine, as establishing principles that would be most extensively 
pernicious. He readily admitted, that no contract tending to 



286 Afi6tifiOJf Of stAVEttf 

crime was binding, and that to condemn men to slavery was 
criminal. If 100 Acts of Parliament had been passed to establish 
slavery, and if all the Members of that House had sworn at the 
Table to maintain slavery, slavery ought nevertheless to be 
abolished. But that was not the question to be considered. 
When crime entered into a contract between two parties equally 
criminal, it could not prevent the execution of the contract as it 
respected them. If the choice were solely between violating the 
public faith, or putting an end to slavery, which was a violation of 
the law of nature, it would be a very different matter ; but hero 
there was an alternative ; and where there was that alternative 
the violation of public faith would be subversive of all public and 
private morality. He was sorry to detain the House ; but the 
principle was of so much consequence, not only at the present 
time, but with reference to the future, that he could not refrain 
from making a few further observations upon it. If they were to 
violate the public faith pledged to the West-India planter, they 
would establish a precedent of a most monstrous and injurious 
character. To illustrate this position, he would take an instance 
from the commonest life : suppose a Catholic gentleman had 
ordered an image for the decoration of his chapel to be sculptured 
by a first-rate artist, and that when, after immense skill and 
labour, the image was finished, he should say to the artist, "Take 
it back, since I ordered it my mind has been enlightened ; I now 
believe that the Protestant is the true religion. I therefore 
consider the contract between you and me as sinful, and I cannot 
consent to perform my part of it." Would not the argument that 
would justly be used be : " If you are enlightened, so much the 
better; but you must pay for the contract into which you entered 
when you were in a state of darkness t ' Or suppose a Mahome- 
tan, having three or four wives in his Harem, were to embrace 
Christianity, would he be entitled to break his contract with them, 
turn them all out into the v/ovll, and leave them to starve? Or, 



ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 287 

in the case of a lottery, which, as all gaming was vicious, ought 
never to be resorted to by a Government, would it not be the 
height of enormity, if, after all the tickets had been sold, Govern- 
ment were to declare that it had become sensible of its error, and 
were to leave the purchasers to digest their loss? Nay, if once 
such a doctrine as that which he was contravening were established, 
almost the whole of the public debt of this country ought to bo 
wiped away; for he held that there was no national crime greater 
than to engage in wanton and unjustifiable wars ; and the greater 
part of that debt was incurred in the prosecution of such wars. 
For instance, during the American war we had borrowed 100 
millions. The prosecution of that war was as wicked an act as the 
maintenance of slavery. What difference was there between 
keeping one set of men in a state of severe and unmerited bon- 
dage, and carrying tire and sword among another set of men who 
merely asserted their rights? If it was unjust to compel the 
slave to labour throughout life for his master, was it not unjust to 
spend money in sending the sabre of the Hessian, or the tomahawk 
of the Indian, into the fields of a people who were only struggling 
for liberty ? If, therefore, the principle against which he was 
contending were established, those who admitted it would be at a 
loss to make out how the claims of almost any public creditor 
could be considered as valid. He repeated, therefore, that he was 
decidedly favourable to two of the principles of the Bill ; the 
Abolition of Slavery, and the Compensation to the Planter. But 
as to the third principle of this Bill, which related to the transition 
state of the negro, before the total cessation of his slavery, he 
confessed that he entertained great, and in some respects, he 
feared, insurmountable doubts. There could be no question that 
it was the solemn duty of Parliament to do all they could to 
protect the planter? but he had great doubts if the provision in 
question would have that etfect. If it could be proved, that what 
thev were abou/ f o 4o was calculated to improve the morality Q\ 



288 ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

the slave, and thereby enable him, when he became wholly free, 
better to discharge the duties of a citizen, he should assent to it, 
lie she aid not refuse to assent to it because it was severe, pro- 
vided it could be shown that that severity was likely to be 
efficacious. What he objected to was this, that the restraints laid 
on the negro by the Bill were not so laid with the sole view of 
improving his moral character. His right hon. friend had, with 
perfect candour, admitted that. The ninth clause of the Bill 
contained a provision that it should be lawful for the slave at any 
time to purchase his freedom on the payment of a value legally 
fixed. Now that clause admitted a principle in which he could 
not acquiesce ; namely, that the planters had a right to compen- 
sation from their slaves. The planters and the State had been 
accomplices in a crime, and it would be exceedingly hard and 
unjust to throw the burden of retribution on one party; but it 
would be still more hard and unjust to lay any portion of it on 
the third and injured party. By this clause a negro who was fit 
for all the duties of civil life, might still be kept in slavery. Why 
was he to give this money to his master ? If the clause had 
provided, that when the slave had laid up a certain sum in the 
Savings' Bank he should become free, that would have been a fair 
proposition ; but when they compelled him to pay it to the 
master, they compelled him to pay the price of a right — a princi- 
ple — the justice of which he (Mr. Macaulay) could never admit. 
A man who had laid up 10/. was not rendered more or le^s fit for 
freedom by giving that money to his master, or by keeping it in 
his own chest. He denied the right of the State to demand any 
sacrifice whatever from the injured party. He would now say a 
iq\x words' with respect to the restraints which were imposed on 
slaves who were artizans, artificers, coopers, &c, or who, in the 
words of his right hon. friend, were non-predial. Even many of 
those who denied that the slaves engaged in agriculture were fit 
for freedom, admitted that the non-predial slaves were perfectly 
f& for freedom j and be was convinced that thev might be instantly 



ABOLITION" OF SLAVERY. 280 

set free from all restraints, without any danger whatever to society. 

f so, it was impossible to justify the infliction upon them of a 

seven years' apprenticeship. Wiih respect to the other class of 

slaves, who, it might be said, stood more in need of a transition 

state, he was apprehensive that the twelve years' apprenticeship 

rvould be found a bad and inefficient mode of training: them for 

Veedom. There had been no practical experience on this matter. 

Indeed, they might as well talk of practical experience of a nation 

>f Amazons. There had been no example of such apprenticeships. 

[Ie must say. however, that he thought the argument on the 

mbject of his hon. trie a 1, the member for Weymouth, very 

convincing ; and that he did not think that his right hon. friend 

lad met that argument in so direct a manner as was usual with 

urn. Agricultural labour in the West-Indies was a most painful 

lrudgery. The labourer, therefore, ought to have a strong motive 

or exertion. He w T as at a loss, however, to understand what that 

notive was to be. Even in this country, agricultural apprentices 

vere not taken without a premium, and he understood that the 

>;reat body of apprentices did not, for a considerable time, earn 

heir own living. But what was to be the motive of the West- 

n-lia apprentice to exert himself? — The Magistrate. It was he 

viio was to superintend all the operations of society in the colonies. 

<>ery day in the week, and every hour in the day, whenever the 

naster became harsh, or the slave became indolent, there was to 

>e no recourse but to the Magistrate. It must be recollected, that 

n the colonies the negro and the master would always have 

opposite interests, and that those intereata oonlr] not be reconciled 

>v law. In this country it was quite different. Here a nutate 

lad the choice of labourers, and a labourer the choice of masters; 

DUt in slavery it had always been found necessary to give despotic 

xnver to the master. By this BUI it was left to the Magistrate to 

ieep the peace between the master and the slave. Every time 

that the slave took twenty minutes, to do that which the master 

thought he might have done in fifteen, recourse must be bad to 
vol I, \i\ 



290 ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

the Magistrate. Society day and night would be in a constant 
state of litigation, and all differences and difficulties were to be 
met by judicial interference. He did not entertain the appre- 
hensions expressed by his hon. friend, the member for Weymouth, 
that such a state of things would lead to gross cruelty. It would, 
in his opinion, be merely a state of dead slavery, a statejilestitute of 
any vital principle. He did not see reason to apprehend any 
cruelty ; for what motive could the stipendiary Magistrate have 
for hostility towards the slaves ? The contrary would, he thought, 
be the case. The Magistrates would be accountable to the 
Colonial Office ; the Colonial Office to tne House of Commons, in 
which every whipping would, no doubt, be told, The object of 
the Magistrate, therefore, would be to be as lenient as possible. 
His apprehension was, that the result of continuing this state of 
society for twelve years would be, that the whole negro population 
would become inactive, would sink into weak and dawdling 
inefficiency, and would be much less fit for liberty at the end of 
the period than at its commencement. His hope was, that the 
system would die a natural death ; that a few months' experience 
would establish its utter inefficiency, so as to induce the planters 
to abandon it, and to substitute a state of freedom. In his 
opinion, however, it would be much better, that that should be 
done by parliamentary enactment, rather than it should be left 
to the Colonial Authorities. He had voted for the second read- 
ing of the Bill, and he should vote for the third reading of it ; but 
while it was in the Committee, he would join with other hon. 
Members in doing all that wa« possible to amend those points of 
the pV *y wmch he objected. He was aware how freely he had 
stated his opinions on this important question : but he was su»-e 
that the House would do justice to his motives, which, amidst 
conflicting feelings and opinions, prompted him bonesjty \q 
^de^vour to perform his 4h^'» 



261 



ON THF BALLOT * 

june 18, 1839. 

Having been long absent from the House, he wished it had been 
in his power to be, at least for some weeks, a silent listener to their 
debates ; but the deep interest which he took in this question, and 
his sense of what he owed to a large and respectable portion of his 
constituents, whose views on this subject concurred with his own, 
impelled him to trust to that indulgence which it was customary 
in that House to bestow. But before he made any remarks upon 
the question immediately before the House, he wished to advert, for 
a short time, to one topic which had excited the greatest interest 
throughout the country, and to which the hon. Gentleman who had 
just sat down had made some very sarcastic, and not, he thought, 
exceedingly well-judged allusions. It was generally understood 
that her Majesty's Ministers had determined that the question of 
the ballot should be an open question — that all the members of the 
Government should be free to speak and vote on that question 
according to their individual opinions. It was natural that this 
determination should excite censure on the one side of the House and 
applause on the other. For his own part, he must say, that, with- 
out any reference whatever to his opinion on this particular question, 
he was inclined, on higher and more general grounds, to approve 
of the determination of the Government. He rejoiced to see the 
number of open questions increasing ; he rejoiced to see that they 
were returning to the wise, the honest, the moderate maxims which 
prevailed in that House in the time of their fathers and grand- 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. xlviii p. 462^76. 



tilt THK RALLOf. 

fathers. He said, that the practice of the House, in that respect, 
h?d undergone, in verv recent times, a great change; he believed 
that another change was now taking place, and that they were 
reverting to a more prudent and rational system. To what pre- 
cise extent it was desirable that the Ministers of the Crown should 
act in strict concert together in Pailiament on the various legisla- 
tive questions that came under consideration, was an exceedingly 
nice question, 9 question to which, so far as he was aware, no rigid 
and strictly drawn rule could be applied. Hon. Gentlemen on the 
other side, no doubt, possessed a great advantage over him ; they 
were probably aware of much that might have passed during the last 
four or five years on this subject, with which he was unacquainted. 
But he was not aware that any speculative or practical statesman 
had ever been found, either in writing or speaking, to take any 
distinct line on this subject, and to trace out a definite line of 
action, for the guide of political prudence, in all cases, was, lie 
believed, difficult, and perhaps impossible. It was perfectly plain, 
however, that there were but three courses possible with respect 
to the conduct of Ministers in dealing with legislative questions — 
either that they must agree on all questions whatever, or that they 
must pretend to agree where there was a real difference, or that 
they must leave each individual member of their body to take the 
course which his own opinion and inclination dictated. Now, that 
there should be a perfect agreement between Ministers on all ques- 
tions, they knew to be impossible. That was not his expression, it 
was the expression of one who had long been the brightest orna- 
ment of that House — Lord Chatham. That great man said, 
''Talk of divided houses! Why, there never was an instance of 
an united Cabinet ! When were the minds of twelve men ever cast 
in one and the same mould ?" They knew that even if two men 
were brought up together from their childhood — if they followed 
the same course of studv, mixed in the same societv, communi- 
cated their sentiments to each other on all topics with perfect free- 



THE DALLOt £93 

dom, and exercised a mutual influence in forming each other's 
minds, a perfect agreement between them on political btlbjeets 
could never be expected. How then was it possible that this 
agreement could subsist between a cabinet of several persons imper- 
fectly acquainted with each other ? Every Government — he spoke 
neither of the present Government, nor of the late Government, 
nor of the Government which seemed about to be formed the 
other day-— was constructed in such a manner that forty or fifty 
gentlemen, some of whom had never seen each other's faces till they 
were uuiteu officially; or had been in hot opposition to each other 
all the re. t ot their lives, were brought into intimate connexion. 
He meant to cast no reflection whatever on either side of tin 
House, but such was the general character of all Governments, and 
complete unanimity in any was out of the question. It would, in 
truth, be an absolute miracle. Only two courses therefore, remained. 
Either there might be a semblance of unanimity, where unanimity 
really was not, or each person might be left to act on his own 
opinions. He did not profess any extraordinary degree of prudery 
on matters of political morality. He was perfectly aware that in 
Parliament it was impossible any thing great could be done with- 
out co-operation, and he was aware that there could be no co- 
operation without mutual compromise. He admitted, therefore, 
that men were justified, when united into a party, either in office 
or in opposition, in making mutual concessions, in opposing 
measures, whieh they might, as individuals, think desirable, in 
assenting to those which they might consider objectionable, and giv- 
ing their votes, not with reference to the mere terms of the question 
put from the chair, but with reference to the general state of poli- 
tical parties. All this he admitted. If there were any person who 
thought it wrong, he respected the tenderness of his conscience, 
but that person's vocation was not for a pub'ic life. That person 
should select a quieter path for his passage through life, one in 
which he might play a useful and respectable part; but he was as 



294 tttE TUttOT. 

completely unfitted for the turmoils of political strife as a Quaker, 
by his religious principles, was prevented from undertaking the 
command of a regiment of horse. Thus far he admitted the prin- 
ciple of party combinations, but he admitted that they might be 
carried too far — that they had been carried too far. That a Mem- 
ber of the House should say " No," to a proposition which jie 
believed to be essentially just and necessary — that he should 
steadily vote through all its stages in favour of a bill that he 
believed would have pernicious consequences, was conduct which 
he (Mr. Macaulay) should think was not to be defended. Such a 
course of action w r as not reconcileable to a plain man, whose notions 
of morality were not drawn from the casuists. He only defended 
the principle of mutual action among political partisans as being a 
peculiar exception from the great general rules of political morality, 
and it was clear, that an exception from the great rules of political 
morality should be most strictly construed, that it should not be 
needlessly extended, and. above all, that it should not be converted 
into the rule. Therefore, he said, that in the members of a Govern- 
ment, any concession of opinion which was not necessary to the 
efficient conduct of affairs, to cordial co-operation, was to be looked 
upon as unjustifiable. In saying this, he was not pleading for any 
innovation, he was attacking a modern basis of action, and recom- 
mending a return to the sounder and better maxims of the last 
generation. Nothing was more common than to hear it said, that 
the first time when a great question was left open, was when Lord 1 
Liverpool's Administration left the Catholic question open. Now, 
there could not be a grosser error. Within the memory of many 
persons living, the general rule was this, that all questions what- 
ever were open questions in a cabinet, except those which came 
under two classes — namely, first, measures brought forward by the 
Government as a Government, which all the members of it were, 
of course, expected to support ; and, second, motions brought for- 
ward with the purpose of casting a censure, express or implied, on 



THE BALLOT. 29,*> 

the Government, or any department of it which all its members 
were, of course, expected to oppose. lie believed that he laid 
down a rule to which it would be impossible to find an exception, 
he was sure lie laid down a general rule, when he said that fifty 
years ago all questions not falling under these heads were considered 
open. Let gentlemen run their minds over the history of Mr. Pitt's 
administration. Mr. Pitt, of course, expected that every Gentle- 
man connected with him by the ties of office should support him 
on the leading questions of his Government — the India Bill, the 
resolutions respecting the commerce of Ireland, the French com- 
mercial treat} 7 . Of course, also, he expected, that no Gentleman 
should remain in the Government who had voted for Mr. Bas- 
tard's motion, of censure on the naval administration of Lord 
Howe, or for Mr. Whitbread's motion on the Spanish armament; 
but, excepting on such motions, brought forward as attacks 
on Government, perfect liberty was allowed to his colleagues, 
and that not merely on trifles, but on constitutional questions 
of vital importance. The question of Parliamentary reform 
was loft open ; Mr. Pitt and Mr. Pundas were in favour of 
it, Lord Mulgrave and Lord Grenville against it. On the im- 
peachment of Warren Hastings, likewise, the different Mem- 
bers of Government were left to pursue their own course; that 
governor was attacked by Mr. Pitt, and defended by Lord Mul- 
grave. In 1790 the question, whether the impeachment should be 
eonsidered as having dropped, in consequence of the termination 
of the Parliament, in which the proceedings were commenced, was 
left an open question ; Mr. Pitt took one side, and was answered 
by his own Solicitor-general, Sir J. Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon. 
The important question respecting the powers of juries in cases of 
libel was left open ; Mr. Pitt took a view favourable to granting 
them extensive powers, Lord Grenville and Lord Thurlow opposed 
him. The abolition of the slave trade was also an open question. 
Mr? 1'itt and Lord Gren villa were favourable to it; Mr. Pundrt* 



296 THE BALLOT. 

and Lord Thuilow were among the most conspicuous defenders of 
the slave trade. All these instances had occurred in the space of 
about five vears. Were they not sufficient to prove how absurdly 
and ignorantly those persons spoke who told us, that the practice 
of open questions was a mere innovation of our own time ? There 
were men now living — great men, held in honour and reverence — 
Lord Grey, Lord Wellesley, Lord Holland, and others, who we'll 
remembered, that at an early period of their public life, the law of 
libel, the slave trade, Parliamentary reform, were all open ques- 
tions, supported by one section of the Cabinet, and opposed by 
another. Was this the effect of any extraordinary weakness or 
timidity on the part of the statesman then Prime Minister? No; 
Mr. Pitt was a man, whom even his enemies and detractors always 
acknowledge, possessed of manly, brave, and commanding spirit. 
And was the effect of this policy to enfeeble his Administration, to 
daunt his adherents, to render them unable to withstand the 
attacks of the Opposition ? On the contrary, never did a ministry 
present a firmer or more serried front to Opposition, nor had he 
the slightest doubt but that their strength was increased in conse- 
quence of giving each Member more individual liberty. Where 
there were no open questions, opinions might be restrained for a 
time, but sooner or later they would show themselves, and when 
they did, what would be the consequence ? Not. as in Mr. Pitt's 
time, when one Minister would speak against a measure and 
another for it — when one would divide with the ayes, and another 
with the noes, and as Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas did, all in perfect 
good humour, lest the Government should be dissolved. Now, 
as soon as one Cabinet Minister got up and declared that he could 
not support the view taken by another upon any question, what 
was the result ? The result had been seen. They ail remembered 
the manner in which the Government of the Duke of Wellington, 
in 1828, dispensed with the services of some members of the cabinet, 
jji consequence of a difference of opinion upon a subject on which 



irlE to allot. 29? 

iiot one of Mr. Pitt's colleagues would have asked permission to 
vote against him. He did not pretend to draw the line precisely, 
but he was satisfied that of late the line had been drawn in an 
improper and inconsiderate manner. It was time they should 
return to better maxims, maxims which had been shown by expe 
Hence to be sound and good. He was perfectly satisfied that th< 
present Government would find, by taking this course on the pre- 
sent occasion, that they had increased their strength and raised their 
character. Now, to come to the particular question before the 
House, he should vote for the motion of the hen. Member for the 
city of London. lie wished to explain that, in doing this, he was 
merely to be understood as giving a declaration in favour of the prin- 
ciple of secret voting. He desired to be understood as reserving to 
liimself the right of withholding his support from any bill which, 
when he examined its details, did not appear to contain such provi- 
sions as would effect the object he had in view. He must reserve to 
himself, also, the right of considering how far he could, with pro- 
priety, give his support to any bill which should not be accompanied 
or preceded by some measure for improving the mode of revising the 
registration. He should think it most disingenuous to give a popu- 
lar vote, saddling it with a condition which he thought either im- 
possible or exceedingly difficult of fulfilment. Such was not his 
opinion. He had no doubt that it was possible to provide machi- 
nery which should give both to the voter and to the country all the 
security which the transactions of human life admitted, and he had 
as little doubt that it was possible to devise a tribunal, whose 
decision on a vote before the election would command as much 
public confidence as the decisions of committees of that House after 
elections. Subject to these two conditions he would give his sup- 
port to the vote by ballot. He could not say that he did so upon 
the grounds on which many of the supporters of the ballot rested 
their case, because he by no means conceived, like many of them, 

that this was a case on which all the arguments lay on one side, 

13* 



29$ THE BALLOT. 

He admitted that, in his opinion, the advantages that would In 

derived 'from this measure would be very great; but, admitting 

and feeling this, still he was not surprised that very wise and very 

virtuous men hesitated on this subject, and that such men came, 

on this subject, to a conclusion different from his. They must in 

tins, as in almost every other question of human affairs, balance ihe 

good with the good, and the evil with the evil. lie fully admitted 

that the ballot would withdraw the voter from the influence of 

something that was good as well as from the influence of something 

that was bad. He admitted that it took away the salutary check of 

public opinion, as well as the pernicious effect of intimidation. He 

was compelled to strike a balance, and take refuge in the ballot, as 

the lesser of two evils. He did not, he must say, altogether agree 

with the Member for the city of London, if he perfectly understood 

him, in thinking that the ballot would secure that entire prevention 

of the bribery of voters which, on this subject, the hon. Member 

seemed inclined to hope. In small constituencies, he did think 

that bribery would continue, although, at the same time, it might 

not be so extensively entered into. He considered that the ballot 

was a remed} r , a specific remedy, and the only remedy for the evils 

of intimidation ; and upon this ground he gave it his support. 

There was a time when he, like the noble Lord who seconded the 

motion of the hon. Member for London, was inclined to hope that 

those evils, like many other evils which had yielded to the force of 

public opinion and the progress of intelligence, would die a natural 

death. That hope he had been compelled to relinquish, lie 

believed the evil to be a growing evil, and he was satisfied that it 

had made progress within the last seven years. He believed it 

had made progress within the last three years. He could not 

disguise from himself that the growth of this evil was, in some 

measure, to be imputed to the Reform Act; and, in saying this, 

he only said it in common of the Reform Act, and of almost 

every great measure. The Reformation of the Church, the}' v3\ 



THE BALLOT. 

knew, produced classes of society and moral evils that were 
unknown in the time of the Plantagenets. The Revolution pro- 
duced a description of abuses that were unknown in the time 
of the Stuarts ; and the Reform Act. although he believed no 
measure was more generally pleasing to the country, like the Re- 
formation of the Church and the Revolution, produced some new, 
and aggravated some old, evils ; it swept away many abuses, but 
it seemed to him to have given a deeper and mere malignant 
energy to the abuses which it spared. It swept away many of the 
old channels of corrupt influence, but, in those channels which it 
had not swept away, the corrupt current not only still ran on, but 
it ran on deeper, and stronger, and fouler than ever. It destroyed, 
or, if it did not destroy, it restricted within narrow limits, the old 
practice of direct nomination ; but, in doing so, he believed it gave 
a new impulse to the practice of intimidation, and this at the very 
moment when it conferred the franchise on thousands of electors, 
and thus placed them in a situation in which they were most open 
to influence and intimidation. It was impossible to close theii 
eyes to the evidence that was offered to them on every side. If he 
believed the outcry raised, not by one party, or from one corner of 
the kingdom, but by Tories, Whigs, and Radicals, in England, 
Scotland, and Ireland, he must believe that there were, sitting in 
tl» at House, Gentlemen who owed their seats to votes extorted by 
tear. And he said, that if there was any Gentleman in that House 
who owed his seat to such means, it were infinitely better that he 
sat there for Old Sarum ; for, by sitting there for Old Sarum, lie 
would be no Representative of the people, nor was he a Represen- 
tative of the people now. At Old Sarum there were no threats of 
ejectments because a voter had more regard to his public duty 
than to his private interest. At Old Sarum the voter was never 
put to the alternative whether he would abandon his principles, or 
reduce his family to distress. All tyranny was bad ; but the worst 
was that which worked with the machinery of freedom, Uiulei! 



300 THE BALLOT. 

an undisguised oligarchy, the people suffered only the evil of being 
governed by those whom they had n3t chosen ; but, to what- 
ever extent intimidation mixed itself up with the system if popu- 
lar election, to that extent the people suffered both the evil of 
beinf o'overned by those whom they had not chosen, and the evil 
of being coerced into a professed choice. A great number of human 
beings were thus mere machines through whom the great proprie- 
tors expressed their pleasure, and the greater their number, the' 
Greater the extent of misery and degradation. The noble Lord 
who had seconded the motion said, and most justly said, that he 
did not wish, in supporting this motion, to deprive wealth of ite 
legitimate influence. Wealth, under any system, must alwayt 
retain its legitimate influence. Wealth was power, and powet 
justly and kindly used necessarily inspired affection. Wealth, or 
that which was so, compared with what was possessed by the great 
mass of electors, was closely connected with intellectual superiority. 
It enabled its possessor to select and prosecute any study to which 
he might be inclined ; to continue it when those who commenced 
life with him, under less favourable circumstances, were forced to 
drudge for their daily bread ; to enlarge his mind by foreign 
travel : to acquire an intimacy with the history of nations, and 
with the arts and sciences. These were advantages to which it 
was impossible that constituencies could be blind ; nay, going 
much below those who formed the present body of electors, and 
descending to the very lowest of the populace, it never was found 
that, even in their wildest aberrations, they chose a leader desti- 
tute of these recommendations. This was the natural, the inde- 
structible, the legitimate, the salutary influence of wealth. What- 
ever was more than this was corruption ; and if it were thought 
necessary, as it appeared from the speech of the hon. Member wdio 
had last spoken, that some persmm in that House did think it 
necessary to maintain the influence of bribery in our elective sys- 
&#)? &§» b§ $&di & at WtoupwaWy ftw bpt m& Uaet objectiyjj* 



THE I! ALLOT. 30 1 

able method was that of open bribery, But against bribery tliei 
enacted laws ; against bribery they passed resolutions ; for bri- 
bery, boroughs were disfranchised; for bribery, Members were 
unseated ; for bribery indictments and informations were pre- 
ferred ; for bribery, the penalties extended both to the elector and the 
elected ; one man was disqualified, another man fined. On what 
principle did they inflict penalties on the elector — on what prin- 
ciple but this, that, from having dealt in pecuniary corruption* 
the elector was no longer fit to exercise the right of voting ? But 
what was the operation of intimidation ? It was this — " Vote with 
me, or give up my custom. Vote with me, or give up your farm." 
Or it was thus — " Vote with me, and I will give you 20/. for a 
pair of boots." Why, surely it was notorious that this was one of 
the constant forms of corruption. ' Vote with me, and I will give 
you 2.1. for a pair of boots," was a common and constant form of 
corruption, though less so, perhaps, because less easy, than " Vote 
for me, or I will carry my custom to the boot-maker's in the next 
street." On what possible pretext could any man defend such an 
exercise of the power of wealth as this ? And here he must say, that 
he almost dissented from the form of expression used by the how. 
Member for London in his eloquent and excellent speech ; he 
objected to the hon. Member making an antithesis between intimi- 
dation and corruption. He said, that intimidation was corruption 
in its worst and most loathsome form, stripped of every seduction, 
of every blandishment, of everything that had the appearance of 
liberality and good humour ; a hard, strict, cruel corruption, seeking 
by means most foul, a most loathsome end. It was corruption 
working by barbarity ; and this sort of corruption, this general sort 
of corruption, was, most unhappily, the easiest and cheapest of all. 
Corruption by gifts costs something, but corruption by threats cost 
nothing but the crime. It was only of a superfluity out of 
what was left after expending all that was necessary for the sup- 
port of a family, that corruption by giving commenced : but how 



302 THE BALLOT. 

much worse was the corruption of taking away ? The man who 
practised intimidation was under no necessity of mortgaging hia 
estate to prepare for an election : nay, at the same time that he 
improved perhaps his lands, by the very mode of administering the 
economy of his family, he was able to effect by intimidation all 
the purposes of corruption to a greater extent, and with more com- 
plete demoralization, than had ever been seen in Grampound or 
East Retford. But not only was intimidation worked easily and 
cheaply, but it was also most trying to the virtue of the persons 
that were subjected to it, inasmuch as it was much more easy to 
refuse that which a man never had, than to submit to be pillaged 
of that which he Avas accustomed to have. Many men who would 
not hesitate to throw down a purse if it were offered to him to vote 
for a particular candidate, would nevertheless vote against his con- 
science for fear of an ejectment. And he found, that this corrup- 
tion, which was the greatest, the easiest, the cheapest, and the most 
trying to the party, was also the safest of all. It was also that 
sort of corruption which they allowed and must allow with perfect 
impunity. They could punish to a certain extent that good- 
humoured corruption which corrupted by making men happy, but 
they could not punish that malignant corruption that corrupted by 
making men miserable. They could not set up an inquisitorial 
tribunal that would be entitled to ask these questions : — " Why did 
you not continue such a lease — what fault did you find — did not 
the tenant do justice to the land — did he not pay his rent— was 
he disrespectful — and if not for his vote, why did you turn him 
out?" Or, to take the instance of a tailor after the Westminster 
election, could you put such questions as these : — " Why have you 
left him — had he not suited you — did he not fit you well — were 
his charges too high — and if not for his vote, why did you leave 
him?" Such a remedy would be worse than the disease. Pro- 
perty ceased to be property, if they called upon the proprietor for 
any reasons other than, were will and caprice, to state why he din- 



Tttfe ballot. S03 

charged his tailor or other tradesman. !n what position, then, did 
the} 7 stand ? Here was, as it seemed to him, a great evil — a grow 
inp- evil — an evil much more fearful than manv which had under- 
gone the direct censure of the law. But it was so intertwined witti 
the institution of property, that if they attempted to strike at it by 
means of an enacting bill, they would inflict necessarily a wound 
noon the institution of proDerty. It seemed to him, then, con- 
sidering punishment out of the question, that they could only try 
means of prevention. What were the means of prevention sug- 
gested ? Absolutely none, except the ballot. Here, then, or no- 
where we can find means of reconciling the rights of property with 
the rights of suffrage. In this way, only, could they enable eacli 
party really to do what he liked with his own. The estate was 
the landlord's, the vote was the tenant's." " So use your own 
rights," was tbs language of all civil as well as moral law, "as not 
to interfere with the rights of others." But here, it should be 
remarked, they could not give the one right without infringing or 
rather destroying the other. Through a system of open voting, 
they could not give the landlord that dominion over his estate 
which he ought to have, without throwing in the dominion over his 
tenants' votes which he ought not to have, and under the same 
system of open voting they could not protect the tenant's vote with- 
out interfering with the landlord's property. Under a system of 
open voting, with rights opposed to each other, it was impossible 
to reconcile the differences between these two great principles on 
which depended the whole national prosperity, liberty and pro- 
perty. If, then, there was any mode of reconciling these princi- 
ples, ought they not eagerly to embrace it, and most seriously tc 
consider whether they would not find in the ballot the mode of 
reconciling them ? Whether the ballot would not give equal and 
perfect protection to both ? Whether it would not give to each 
just what they ought to have *nd nothing more than each ought 
to have ? Tf this were, as lie reallv believed it would be, the effect 



§04 tiife nALLof. 

of the ballot, if here, and here only, they could find a solution ot 
those difficulties, surely no slight objections ought to deter them 
from adopting it. The objection to the ballot, though by no means 
the only one raised in discussion, which appeared to throw any real 
difficulty in the way of carrying it, was, as had been said by an elo- 
quent, ingenious, and lively speaker, that in the minds of the people 
there was a moral objection to it, otherwise nothing could prevent 
for a single session the carrying of the principle of vote by ballot. 
lie must own that this objection, high !y respectable as many of 
those who entertain it were, did not seem to him sound or well 
considered, because he hardly thought that it could be entertained 
by any respectable and sensible person, who considered for a mo- 
ment what was the amount of the evil effected by the present system, 
Surely if it were immoral to tell an untruth, at least it was equally 
immoral, having received a great public trust for the public good, 
to employ that trust to an evil purpose. If it were un-English not 
to dare to own the vote that was given, surely it was more un-Eng- 
lish not to dare to vote as lie thought right. When the word 
un-English was used, they were compelled to contrast their idea 
of that bold and sturdy independence which had been their great 
pride as a national chaiacteristic, with the situation of a man, who, 
holding his farm from year to year, is compelled by fear of pecu- 
niary Joss and ruin to poll against him whom lie wished to see 
chaired, and to vote for the candidate whom, with all his heart, lie 
would see well ducked. At present they knew that many dis- 
honest votes were given, but let the system of secrecy in voting be 
introduced and they would have honest votes, although the parties 
might afterwards denv that thev had given them. Which was 
the greater evil of the two? God forbid that he should say any- 
thing that should seem to extenuate the guilt of falsehood, but God 
forbid, also, that he should not make some allowance for the poor as 
well as for the rich. God forbid that he should see more distinctly 
the mote in the eye of the 10/. householder, than th° beam in tlit, 



tlift bALLOt. 305 

eye of a baron or a bishop. If morality were anything more thai 
capricious favour or mere pretext, they would have ample oppor- 
tunities of exercising it, without waiting till the ballot became the 
law of the land, or without even descending below their own rank 
in life. If it were criminal in a man to utter an untruth for the 
purpose of guarding a secret against private curiosity, then he 
would say, that they would find many criminals of a far higher 
station, and of a far more cultivated intellect, than the bakers and 
butchers about whose veracity they were so anxious. He would 
take a single illustration from the case of anonymous writers. It 
was perfectly notorious that men of high consideration, men of the 
first distinction, had written books and published them without 
their names, and on being questioned, had denied that they were 
the authors of the works they had written ; and yet this denial did 
not prevent them from being generally considered with respect and 
kindness in society. They had also seen casuists of great repute 
defend those parties. One illustrious name he would instance, 
which would no doubt suggest itself to all who heard him, the 
name of a first-rate man of genius, of excellent principles, and a 
noble spirit — he need hardly add the name of Sir Walter Scott. 
Sir Walter Scott published without his name that eminent and 
popular series of novels which had endeared him to all his country- 
men, nay, almost all the world, and which he for one could not 
think upon without feelings of the deepest admiration and grati- 
tude. Sir Walter Scott published this series of novels anony- 
mously, and to all questions put to him on the subject, persisted in 
denying the authorship of them, till at length he consented to drop 
the veil of concealment, and acknowledged them to be the produc 
tions of his pen. Now he would ask — and he appealed to many 
who were personally acquainted with that great man — lie would 
appeal to them and ask, did this concealment and subsequent 
avowal of his name reflect any shame on the character of Sir W. 
Scott ? — did any one of the large circle of his friends and admirers 



300 rttE BALLOT. 

consider that Sir W. Scott bad dishonoured himself by this pro 
ceeding. All that he demanded was this, that we should, in the 
purity of our own moral feelings, think of the moral feelings of 
other classes, as well as of those belonging to that class to which 
we ourselves belonged ; that we should have one weight and one 
measure ; and that we should extend to those untruths by means 
of which the poor man seeks to protect himself from the encroach- 
ments of the gentleman, that pardon which we extend to the 
untruths by which one gentleman defends himself from the imper- 
tinent curiosity of another. He did not pretend to be a casuist, nor 
to be accustomed to weigh questions of this nature in a very nice 
balance, but he should hesitate, he almost thought, to advise an 
elector now-a-days to tell the truth and take the consequences. 
They had no right to expect sacrifices of that kind from every 
body, or count on the moral courage to make them. As for the 
honest electors, that class of men — village Hampdens, Grey would 
have called them — they would be honest still if this measure were 
adopted. The man who would utter untruths when he had the 
ballot, was the man who would now be ready to give a corrupt 
vote. In fact, there was the same breach of faith in the one course 
as in the other. He was for neither. Of the two alternatives — ■ 
of the two chances of evil — he thought the latter was to be pre- 
ferred. In short, if the voters could not at once keep faith with 
their country, and with their corrupters, he was one who wished 
that we should have a system by which their faith might be kept 
to their country, and broken to their corruptors. If there were 
one system under which, more than, another, it were easy for the 
elector to break his faith to the country, while he kept it with his 
corruptor, that system was the present. Another objection, which 
was sometimes put forward, was contained in this question, " Will 
you disturb that settlement which was made by the Reform Bill, and 
which we were then told was to be final ?" On this point he fully 
agreed with the lion. Member for the citv of London. He thought 



THE BALLOT. 307 

that this question bad been expressly reserved at the time of carry- 
ing 1 the Reform Bill ; nor was he aware that a single person con 
sidered himself, by supporting the Reform Bill, to be pledged to 
do without the ballot. Now, with regard to the finality of the 
Reform Bill; he had always regarded that great measure with 
reverence, — but a rational, not a superstitious reverence ; and he 
conceived that the question, whether it should be amended or not, 
should be considered upon no other principles, but the ordinary 
principles of public good. He saw many and strong arguments 
against frequent and violent changes in our constitutional system. 
lie could not conceal from himself that the great revolution of 
1832 — for revolution it was, and a most fearful and sanguinary 
revolution it would have been in any other nation than this — that 
revolution was effected here without civil disorder, and w thout 
the effusion of blood ; but unquestionably the passing of the bill 
was attended with much excitement and danger. That excitement 
and that danger he was not desirous to renew. He would bear 
with many inconveniences rather than open a similar scene; nay, 
lie would bear with many grievances rather than agree to re-open 
the whole representative system which was established by the 
Reform Act. But if any man argued that the Reform Act ought 
to be final, he must, at the same time, admit, that it ought to be 
effectual, otherwise they would have cut off one form of misrepresen- 
tation merely to have it replaced by another. They must not allow 
that which they meant as a franchise to be turned into a species of 
villein service, more degrading by far than any that belonged to 
the dark era of the 14th century. It was not that threats should 
be substituted in the place of bribery — it was not for that result that 
the aristocracy had been conquered in their own strongholds ; but 
it was for the establishment of a genuine suffrage, and of real, not 
pernicious, rights, that the Church, the aristocracy, and the Court 
together had been made to give way before the determined voice 
of a united people, The object of that mighty movement was not 



308 THE BALLOT. 

that old abuses should be brought back under new denominations, 
that the place of Old Sarum, the rotten borough, should be sup- 
plied by other Old Sarums, under the respectable names of coun- 
ties and divisions of counties. No, nor was the time far remote, 
when this nation, with a voice as imperative as that with which 
she demanded the Reform Bill, would demand that the Reform 
Hill be carried out in the truth of its noble principle, and when that 
just and reasonable demand was conceded, as conceded it woul 1 
be, and the franchise of every voter should be made a franchise 
indeed, they would find, that instead of having led the way, b} 
this step, to reckless spoliation and confusion, in truth they hac 
strengthened the law, secured to property its just lights, drawn 
closer the ties which united the two great orders of society to each 
other, and attached both of them all the more to the law, the Par 
liament, and the Crown. 



ON CONFIDENCE IN TIIE MINISTRY.* 

JANUARY 29, 1840. 

It is possible, Sir, that the House may imagine I rise under ^me 
little feeling of irritation, to reply to the personalities and accusa- 
tions of the right hon. Baronet [Sir J. Graham]. I shall indulge 
in neither. It would be easy to reply to them — to recriminate 
would be still easier. Were I alone personally considered, I should 
think either course unworthy of me. I know that egotism in this 
House is always unpopular ; on this occasion it would be singu- 
larly unseasonable. If ever I am under the necessity of addressing 
this House on matters Which concern myself, I hope it shall be on 
some occasion when the dearest interests of the empire are not 
staked on the event of our debate. I do rise, Sir, to address you 
under feelings of deep anxiety, but in that anxiety there is not, if I 
know my own heart, any mixture of selfish feeling. I do feel, 
indeed, with the most intense conviction, that in pleading for the 
Government to which I belong, I am pleading for the deepest inter- 
ests of the Commonwealth — for the reformation of abuses, and for 
the preservation of august and venerable institutions. I trust, Mi. 
Speaker, that the first Cabinet Minister who, when the question is, 
whether the Government be or be not worthy of confidence, offers 
himself in debate, will find some portion of that generosity and good 
feeling which once distinguished English gentlemen. But be this 
as it may, my voice shall be heard. I was saying that I am 
pleading, not only for the preservation of our institutions, but for 
liberty and order, for justice administered in mercy, for equal laws, 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. li. p. 816-884 



CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 

for the rights of conscience, and for the real union of Great 
Britain and Ireland. Sir, I wish first to address myself not 
to any matter relating to myself alone, but to those parts 
of the subject with which my name is bound up in some de- 
gree with the character of the Government to which I belong. 
My opinions are favourable to secret voting. The opinions of my 
noble Friend (Lord John Russell) are in favour of open voting. 
Notwithstanding, we meet as Members of one Government. This 
has been made a topic of charge against the Government by every 
Gentleman who has addressed the House, from the hon. Baronet 
who opened the debate, down to the right hon. Baronet who spoke 
last. Now, Sir, I say in the first place, that if on account of this 
difference of opinion we shall be considered by the House unwor- 
thy of its confidence, then no Government for many years has been 
worthy, is worthy, of the House of Commons : for the Government 
of Mr. Titt, the Government of Mr. Fox, the Government of Lord 
Liverpool, the Government of Mr. Canning, the Government of the 
Duke of Wellington, have all had open questions on subjects of 
the greatest moment. I say that the Question of Parliamentary 
Reform was an open question with the Government of Mr. Pitt. 
Mr. Pitt, holding opinions in favour of that question, brought into 
i the Cabinet Lord Grenville, who did not. Mr. Pitt was opposed to 
the slave trade. Mr. Dundas, a defender of it, was a Member of 
his Government. I say Mr. Fox, in the same manner, in his Cabi- 
nets of 1782 and 1800, had open questions of similar importance; 
and I say that the Governments of Lord Liverpool, Mr. Canning, 
and the Duke of Wellington, left, as an open question, Catholic 
Emancipation ; which, closely connected as it was with the execu- 
tive Administration, was, perhaps, one of the last questions which 
should ever have been left an open one by any Government. But 
to take still more important ground, and to come to a question 
which more nearly interests us — suppose you dismiss the present 
Government, on what principle do you mean to constitute an Ad- 



CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. Hi J 

ministration composed of lion. Gentlemen opposite ? Is it pro* 
posed by yon to leave the privileges of this House an open que* 
tion ? Is it intended that your proposed Government should con 
sist of those amongst you who declare themselves favourable to oui 
privileges ? Will it be said, that the question of privilege is of less 
importance than the question of the ballot? It is from the ques- 
tion of privilege that the question of the ballot, and all similar 
questions, derive their importance. And of what consequence ia 
the mode in which you are elected, if, when you meet, you do not 
possess the privileges necessary for your efficiency as a branch of 
the Legislature ? Is anything more clear than that, if an address 
(which is likely) were presented to the Crown on the subject of our 
privileges, you could never agree as to the answer to be given tc 
it? Why, can any question be more important than that which 
should determine In what relation we stand to our constituents in 
the Courts of Judicature, and to the other branches of the Legisla- 
ture ? And, on the other hand, what is more monstrous (if we 
take the view of those opposed to our privileges) than that we 
should assert our privileges by attacking the liberty of the subject, 
by infringing on the functions of the courts where her Majesty dis- 
penses the law, and committing to prison persons guilty only of tho 
crime of appealing to the laws of their country ? Can you con- 
ceive anything more absurd than the Prime Minister, over night, 
sending men to prison, to whom his law officers and supporters pay 
Complimentary visits in the morning? I seriously believe that the 
differences of opinion on the other side on the question of privilege 
would, if a Ministry were formed from that quarter, produce, prac- 
tically, more inconvenience in a week, than leaving the ballot an 
open question is likely to produce in ten years. The right hon. 
Baronet asks in what does the present Government differ from the 
Chartists ? One Member of the present Government has, it is true, 
declared himself favourable to the ballot. I objected to the use of 
llie word pledged ; fori never gave'any constituent bo<lv a pledye, 



31'2 CON'FtOEXCfc IK Tttfe MiNtSfftV. 

It is alleged too, tha> because I maintained that a 10/. house being 
considered a sufficient proof of a man's stake in the country to fit 
him to be a voter, it was not desirable his locality should decide upon 
his right of voting — for this reason, I stand exactly in the same 
position as those who would abolish all pecuniary qualification. I 
cannot see, however, in what way I admit, in the least, the doc- 
trine of those who would abolish all qualification whatever, by 
expressing a desire to see the present 10Z. franchise extended. In 
my opinion, a pecuniary qualification is indispensably necessary to 
the safety of the empire. In my opinion the 10Z. qualification has 
never proved too high; and supposing society to continue in its 
progress — supposing education to continue, and the distribution of 
property, and the value of money to remain as they are, if I can 
foresee anything in my public conduct, I shall abide by the opinion 
which I have just expressed as to the question of the franchise. 
This is my answer to the right hon. Baronet, and if it does not 
convey to him a proof that my opinions are different from those 
of the Chartists on this subject, his conception of their doctrines 
differs very widely from mine. I come to that which, through the 
whole debate, has formed the principal subject of observation ; for 
it must be clear, that it is not on the conduct of Commissioner Lin, 
or of Captain Elliot, or on the hostilities on the river La Plata, or 
on any circumstance of this kind, that the result of this debate must 
turn. The main argument of the hon. Gentleman opposite, used 
by the hon. Baronet who opened the debate, repeated by his 
seconder, and constituting the substance of every speech which has 
been delivered, amounts to this : — " The country is in an unsatis- 
factory state — there is great turbulence — there is great disposition 
to extensive political change — and at the bottom of all lies the agi- 
tating policy of those Whigs. They raised themselves to power by 
means of agitation — they strengthened themselves in favour by 
means of agitation — they carried the Reform Bill by means of agi 
tation — and we are now paying the fruits of their acts. All this 



CONFIDENCE IX THE M istsTR'T. 

Chartism is but the effect of their conduct; and it is evident tha 
from those who have caused the evil you cannot expect the remedy 
We ought to dismiss them, and seek others who, never having 
excited the people to turbulence, will command the confidence of 
the country." I don't know whether I have stated it correctly, but 
this, as nearly as I could collect, is the substance of what has been 
urged by lion. Gentlemen opposite. Now, I might fellow the 
example set by my right hon. Friend (the Judge Advocate) in his 
most noble and eloquent speech, and content myself with stating 
that this agitation belonged principally to the Government of Lord 
Grew Of that Government, the noble Lord, the Member for Lan- 
cashire, and the right hon. Member for Pembroke were Members. 
I might say — " they were then distinguished Members of this 
House. To them I leave the task of exculpation — to them I leave 
it to defend agitation — to them I leave it to decide on what prin- 
ciple, and to what extent, they shared in such means of carrying 
public questions." In spite of that challenge which my right hon. 
Friend gave the right hon. Baronet, he gives no explanation, but 
contents himself with the simple confession — " I liked the Reform 
Bill — I agitated for it. I was carried I admit far beyond pru- 
dence, and just on the verge of the law." Is it possible that any 
gen'.leman possessing only a very small part of the foresight of the 
right hon. Gentleman should not perceive, that as soon as this 
defence is admitted, this consequence must of necessity follow — 
that the only question is, whether the measures to be agitated for 
are good in themselves, and not whether agitation itself be good or 
bad. The right hon. Baronet admits, then, that agitation itself is 
a proper and legitimate mode of carrying any measure that is good. 
When the right hon. Baronet comes forward to charge the present 
Government with agitation, and directs li is reproaches against no 
member of that Government more than myself, I confess I feel 
some inclination to remonstrate with the right hon. Gentleman for 
want of generosity : for my interest in this question is small indeec} ? 



314 CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 

compared with that of the right hon. Gentleman himself. I, Sir, 
was not a member of the Cabinet that brought in the Reform Bill 
— I was not one of those Ministers who told their Sovereign they 
would serve him no longer unless he would create a sufficient 
number of Peers to carry their measures. I, Sir, at that time was 
merely one of those hundreds within these walls, and of millions 
throughout the country, who were firmly and deeply impressed 
with the conviction that the Reform Bill was a great and salutarj 
measure — who reposed the greatest confidence in the abilities, th( 
integrity, and the patriotism of the Ministers; and I must add, thai 
in no Member of that administration did T place greater confidence 
for the possession of those high qualities than in the noble Lord 
the Secretary for Ireland, and in the right hon. Gentleman the First 
Lord of the Admiralty. In^ none did I place greater confidence 
that they would take measures to guard against the evils insepara- 
ble from all great changes, and take heed that they did not pro- 
duce consequences injurious to the community. Is it not extra- 
ordinary that we should be reproached with what was, in fact, 
confidence in the noble Lord and right hon. Gentleman, by the 
very men who are seeking to raise that noble Lord and right hon. 
Gentleman to power? If the provisions -of the Reform Bill point 
to Chartism — if the doctrines of Chartism are to be traced to the 
spirit of that enactment, then, Sir, I am bound to say that none 
more than the noble Lord and the right hon. Gentleman are 
answerable for it. If men are to be deemed disqualified for places 
in the councils of their Sovereign, because they exerted themselves 
to carry that bill, because they appealed to the people to support 
that bill, because they employed means, certainly lying within the 
vei-ge of the law, but certainly also, as has been observed, just 
within the confines of prudence, then, Sir, I do say that no men in 
this empire lie under a disqualification for office more complete, 
more entire, than the noble Lord and the right hon, Baronet. Sir, 
{ if aye to them, &e task of defending themselves; well arfe \l\ej 



qualified by their talents to do so ; but if the noble Lord does noi 
answer, then it will remain for the right hon. Baronet, who twice 
offered both of them places in his Cabinet, to do so. If the noble 
Lord and the right hon. Baronet (or, as I trust he will permit me 
in spite of some few asperities this evening, to call him my right 
hon. Friend) will forgive me, I would offer some considerations in 
extenuation of their conduct. I would say, "You condemn agita- 
tion. Do you mean to say that abuses shall never be removed ■ 
If they are to be removed, then I ask, is it possible that any great 
abuse can, in a country like this, be removed till the public feeling 
is against it, or that the public feeling can be raised and kept up 
without arguments, without exertions, both by speech and writing, 
the holding of public meetings, and other means of a like nature V 
Sir, I altogether deny that assertion or insinuation, which T heard 
over and over again, both yesterday and this night, in this House, 
that a Government which countenances, or does not discountenance, 
agitation will not punish rebellion. There may be a similarity hi 
the simple act between the man who bleeds and the man who 
stabs ; but is there no difference in the nature of the action — in its 
intent and in its effects? I do not believe there has been one 
instance of justifiable insurrection in this country for a century and 
a-half. On the other hand, I hold agitation to be essential, not 
onl) to the obtaining of good and just measures, but to the exist- 
ence of a free Government itself. If you choose to adopt the prin- 
ciple of Bishop Horsley, that the people have nothing to do with 
the law : s but to obey them, then, indeed, you may deprecate agita- 
tion ; but, while we live in a free country, and under a free Govern- 
ment, your deprecation is vain and untenable. If a man lives in 
Russia and can obtain an audience of the Emperor Nicholas or of 
Count Nesselrode, and can produce proof that certain views he 
entertains are sound, certain plans he proposes would be attended 
with practical benefit, then, indeed, without agitation, without pub- 
lic discussion, with a single stroke of the pen, a gnat and important 



318 CQKftbSNCE tisf tfiE MiKtstkY, 

change is at once effected. Not so, Sir, in this country. Here tiio 
people must be appealed to — 'he public voice must be consulted 
In saying this have I defended one party alone — have I not 
defended alike both the great parties in this House ? Have we not 
beard of agitation against the Catholic claims ? Has there been 
no agitation against the Poor-law ? Has there been no agitation 
against Education ? Has there been no agitation against the 
Catholic Privy Councillors ? But to pass, Sir, from questions about 
which there may fairly exist a difference of opinion, to measure 
upon which we must all agree — to pass to a measure of the proud 
est, grandest nature that ever received the sanction of a legisla 
ture; I say that the Slave-trade would never have been abolished 
without agitation. I say that slavery would never have been 
abolished without agitation. Would your prison discipline, or the 
severities of your penal code, have been ameliorated without agita- 
tion ? I am far, very far, Sir, from denying that agitation may be 
much abused — that it may be carried to a most unjustifiable 
length. But, Sir, so also may freedom of speech in this House, so 
also may the liberty of the press. What is agitation when it is 
examined, but the mode in which the people in the great outer 
assembly debate? Is it not as necessary that they should have 
their discussion without the walls of this House, as we who sit 
within them ? There may, indeed, be occasional asperities in popu- 
lai meetings, as experience has shown that there frequently are in 
debates in this House, but that is no reason why freedom of debatG 
should be abridged in either. I know well that agitation is fre- 
quently used to excite the people to resist the law, but that that is 
a proper subject for animadversion upon the Magistrates, I deny — 
that the agitation of the present time is evidence of the agitation 
of the Government of Lord Grey, T deny. Tt is perfectly true that 
what is said in this House, or any other public assembly, though 
it may be moderate, reasonable, and may point only to the legal 
remedy for an abuse, may yet be taken up bv the disingenuous 



CONFIDENCE tN TttK MfKtSTItV. SK 

man, and be so twisted, distorted, and perverted, that it may excite 
the populace to acts of crime. I have heard within the walls of 
this House, the right hon. Gentleman opposite — not, T am <ure, 
with any improper motive — apply to secret meetings of men fur 
lawless purposes, expressions which the noble Lord used only with 
respect to public and open meetings. The right hon. Gentleman 
ought to remember, that his own words have been applied by bad 
men for the delusion of the multitude. One of the speeches which 
lias been used by the Chartists as a handle for their excesses, was a 
speech of the right hon. Baronet. Do T blame him for that? No. 
He said nothing which was not within the just line of his duty as a 
Member of this House. I allude to a speech which the right hon. 
Baronet made upon the subject of the emoluments divided among 
the Privy Councillors. I fully acquit the right hon. Gentleman of 
saying anything that was not in strict conformity with his duty, 
but it is impossible for any man so to guard his expressions that 
bad men shall not misconstrue, and ignorant men misunderstand 
them. I therefore throw no censure upon the right Iron. Baronet, 
but I do say, that the very circumstance of his own speech having 
been perverted should make him pause, before bringing charges 
against men not less attached than himself to the peace and well- 
being of society — charges having no better foundation than bad 
reports of their speeches, and his own misapprehension of them. 
Now, Sir, to pass by many topics which, but for the lateness of the 
hour I would willingly advert to, I come to that which is really 
the point. This is not less a comparative than a positive question. 
The meaning of the vote is not, clearly, whether this House ap- 
proves in all respects of the conduct of the Government — it is 
whether this House conceives that a better one can at present be 
formed. All government is imperfect, but some government there 
must be; and if the present Government were far worse titan any 
hon. Gentleman on the other side would represent it to le, still it 
would be every man's duty to support it if he did not see that a 



§18 eONFiDEKCE IN fttfi MitfiSTtlt. 

better one would supply its place. Now, Sir, I take it to be per 
fectly clear that in tbe event of the resignation of the present 
Ad ministration one must be formed, the first place of which must 
be filled by the right hon. Baronet opposite. Towards that right 
hon. Baronet, and towards many of those Noblemen and Gentlemen 
who, in such an event, would be associated with him, I entertain 
nothing but kindly and respectful feelings. I am far — very far I 
hope — from that narrowness of mind which can see merit in no 
party but his own. If I may venture to parody the old Venetian 
proverb, I would say, " Be first an Englishman, and then a Whig." 
Sir, I feel proud for my country when I think how much of inte- 
grity — how many virtues and talents which would adorn any sta 
tion, are to be found among the ranks of my political opponents. 
Among them, conspicuous for his high character and ability, stands 
the right hon. Baronet. When I have said this, I have said enough 
to prove that nothing is further from me than to treat him with th 
smallest discourtesy in the remarks which, in the discharge of mj 
public duty, I shall feel it necessary to make upon his policy and 
that of his party. But, Sir, it has been his misfortune, it has been 
his fate, to belong to a party with whom he has had less sympathy 
than any head ever had with any party. I speak of that which is 
a matter of history. I speak now of times long ago. He declared 
himself decidedly in favour of those principles of free trade which 
made Mr. Huskisson odious to a great portion of the com- 
munity. The right hon. Baronet gave every facility for the remo- 
val of the disabilities of Protestant Dissenters. The right hon. 
Baronet brought in a Bill for the relief of Catholic disabilities ; yet 
what we are charged with is bringing that enactment into practical 
operation. The right hon. Baronet declared himself in favour of 
the Poor-law ; yet if a voice is raised against the " Whig bastiles,"' 
or "the tyrants of Somerset House," that cry is sure to proceed 
from some person who wishes to vote the right hon. Baronet into 
power. Even upon this great question of privilege, upon which 



CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY 



the right hon. Baronet has taken a part which ought to render hif 
name to the end of time honourable in the opinion of this House, 
and of all who value its privileges, I cannot but conceive that the 
right hon. Gentleman is at variance with the great body of his sup- 
porters. Sir, I have also observed that where the right hon. 
Baronet does agree with the great body of his supporters in con- 
clusions, he seldom arrives at those conclusions by the same pro- 
cess of reasoning by which their minds are led. Many great ques- 
tions which they consider as of stern and unbending morality, and 
of strict principle, have been viewed by him as mere points of 
expediency, of place, and of time. I have not heard one allegation 
against the Government of Lord Melbourne which would not enable 
a Government formed by the right hon. Baronet to bring in, with 
some little variation, the same measures. I listened to the right 
hon. Baronet — I always listen to him with pleasure — upon the sub- 
ject of education, and I could not but be amused at the skill with 
which he endeavoured to o-ive the reasons of a statesman for the 
course of a bigot; and my conclusion, as I listened, was that he 
thought as I did with respect to the Douay version and the Normal 
schools. Sir, I am irresistibly brought to this conclusion, that in a 
conjuncture like the present, the right hon. Baronet can conduct 
the administration of aftairs with neither honour to himself, nor 
with satisfaction to that party who seek to force him into office. 
I will not affect to feel apprehensions from which I am entirely 
free. I will not say that I think the right hon. Baronet will act 
the part of a tyrant. I do not think he will give up this country 
to the tender mercies of the bigoted part— and which. form so \nrge 
a part — of his followers. I do not believe he would strike out the 
names of all Catholics from office and from the Privy Council. 
Nor, Sir, do I believe that the right hon. Baronet will come down 
to the House with a Bill for a repeal of his own great measure. 
But, Sir, what I think be will attempt to do is this— he will attempt 
\q keen terms with that party which raises iwn to power bv a wm* 



320 CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 

which would soon excite the gravest discontents in all parts of th<=- 
empire. And at the same time I think, Sir, that he will not 
carry the course of his administration far enough to keep their 
steady support. The result I think, will be this — that the right 
hon. Baronet will lose the support of a great portion of his own 
party, and, at the ?ame time, he will not gain the support of the 
other, till at last his Government will fail from causes purely 
internal. Sir, we have not to act in this merely upon conjecture. 
We have beheld the same piece performed on the same scene, and 
by the same actors, at no distant period. In 1827, the right hon. 
Baronet was, as now, at the head of a powerful opposition. He 
had a strong minority in this House, and a majority in the House 
of Lords ; he was the idol of the Church and of the Universities ; 
and all those who dreaded change — all those who were hostile to 
the principles of liberty and the rights of conscience, considered 
him their leader; he was opposed to those Members who were 
sometimes called Papists, and sometimes idolaters ; he was opposed 
to a Government which was said to have obtained power by per- 
sonal intrigue and Court favour. At last the right hon. Baronet 
rises to the principal place in this House. Free from those diffi- 
culties which had embarrassed him, he was in opposition when Tory 
bigotry had found for the greatest orator, and the most accom- 
plished of Tory statesmen in the nineteenth century, a resting-place 
in Westminster Abbey, and the right hon. Baronet appeared at the 
head of Government upon this bench, and those who had raised 
him to power with the loudest acclamations, and deemed that 
their expectations must necessarily be accomplished. Is it neces- 
sary to say in what disappointment — in what sorrow — in what fury 
all those expectations ended ? The right hon. Baronet had been 
raised to power by prejudices and by passions in which he had no 
share. His followers were bigots ; he was a statesman. He was 
calmly balancing conveniences and inconveniences, whilst thev were 
ready to prefer confiscation, proscription, civil war, to tbe srnalk'^ 



CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 321 

concession to public feeling. The right lion. Baronet attempted to 
stand well with his party, and at the same time to perform some 
part of his duty to his country. Vain effort ! His elevation, as it 
had excited the hopes and expectations of his own party, awakened 
gloomy apprehensions in other quarters. Agitation in Ireland, 
which for a time had slumbered, awakened with renewed vigour, 
and became more formidable than ever. The Roman Catholic 
Association rose to a height of power such as the Irish Parliament 
in the days of its independence never possessed. Violence engen- 
dered violence ; scenes such as the country for long years had not 
witnessed, announced that the time of evasion and delay was 
passed. A crisis was arrived, in which it was absolutely necessary 
for the Government of the day to take one part or the other. A 
plain and simple issue was proposed to the right hon. Baronet — 
either to disgust his party or ruin his country. He chose the good 
path ; lie performed a painful, in some sense a humiliating, but in 
point of fact a most truly honourable part. He came down him- 
self lo propose to this House the great measure of Roman Catholic 
Emancipation. Amongst the followers of the right hon. Baronet, 
there were some who, like himself, had considered opposition to 
the Catholic claims purely as a matter of expediency. These rea- 
dily changed about, and consented to support his altered policy. 
But not so the great body of those who had previously followed 
the right hon. Baronet. With them, opposition to the Roman 
Catholics was a passion, which a mistaken sense of duty bound 
them to cherish. They had been deceived, and it would have been 
more agreeable to them to think, that they had been deceived by 
others than by one of their own sect — one whorr* ^ j 
had been the means of redsmg to a permanent place in the Admi- 
nistration of the country. How profound was their indignation! 
With what an explosion did their rage break forth! None who 
saw that time can ever forget the frantic fury with which the 

former associates of the right hon. Baronet assailed their quondam 

|4* 



322 CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 

chief. Never was such a torrent of invective and calumny directed 
against one single head. All history and all fiction were ran 
sacked by his own followers to furnish terms of abuse and obloquy. 
The right lion. Gentleman, whom I am sorry not now to see in his 
place on the bench opposite, unable to express his feelings in the 
language of English prose, pursued his late chief with reproaches 
borrowed from the ravings of the deserted Dido. Another, wrest- 
ing to his use the page of holy writ, likened him to Judas Iscariot. 
The great university, which heretofore had been proud to confer 
upon him the highest marks of its favour, was now foremost to fix 
upon him the brand of disgrace and infamy. Men came up in 
crowds from Oxford to vote against him, whose presence a few days 
before would have set the bells of all their churches jingling. The 
whole hatred of the high Church party towards those to whom 
they had previously been opposed, was sunk and absorbed in this 
new aversion ; and thence it happened that the Ministry, which in 
the beginning of 1828 was one of the strongest that the country 
ever saw, was at the end of 1829 one of the weakest that a politi- 
cal opponent could desire to combat. It lingered on another year, 
struggling between two parties, leaning now on the Whigs, now 
on the Tories — reeling sometimes beneath a blow from the right, 
sometimes from a blow on the left — certain to fall as soon as the 
two parties should unite in their efforts to defeat it. At last it fell, 
attacked by the whole body of the Church, and of the Tory gentry 
in England. Now, what I wish to know is this : What reason 
have we to believe, that from an Administration now formed by 
the right lion. Baronet we could anticipate any different result. 
''^ u ^ n Baronet is still the same — he is still a statesman? 
Yes— still a statesman, high m intellect, moderate m opinions, calm 
in temper, free from the fanaticism which is found in so large a 
measure among his followers. I will not say, that the party which 
follows him is still the same, for in my opinion it has undergone a 
change, and that change is this— it has become fiercer a«4 WPr« 



CONFIDENCE IN TltE MINISTRY. 323 

intoierant even than in days gone by. I judge by the language 
and doctrines of its press; I judge by the proceedings of its public 
meetings ; I judge by its pulpits — pulpits which are every week 
teeming with invective and slander that would disgrace the hust- 
ings. A change has of late come over the spirit of a part, I hope 
not the most considerable part, of the Tory party. It was once 
the boast of that party, that through all changes of fortune they 
cherished feelings of loyalty, which rendered their very errors 
respected, and gave to servitude something of the dignity and 
worthiness of freedom. A great Tory poet, who, in his lifetime, 
was largely requited for his loyalty, said — 

"Our loyalty is still the same, 
Whether it win or lose the game, 
True as the dial to the sun, 
Although it be not shone upon." 

We see now a very different race of Tories. We have lived to 
see a new party rear its head — a monster of a party, made up of 
the worst points of the Cavalier and the worst points of the Round- 
head. We have lived to see a race of disloyal tories. We have 
lived to see Toryism giving itself the airs of those insolent pipemen 
who puffed out smoke in the face of Charles the First. We have 
lived to see Toryism, which, because it is not suffered to grind the 
people after the fashion of Strafford, turns round and abuses the 
Sovereign after the fashion of — (the remainder of the sentence was 
lost in the cheers of the House.) It is my firm belief that the 
party by which the present motion is supported throughout the 
country desire the repeal of the Catholic Emancipation Act. Foi 
what I say, I will give my reasons, which I think are unanswera- 
ble. In what other way, am I to explain the outcry which has 
been raised throughout the whole of the country about the three 
Papist Privy Councillors? Is the Catholic Emancipation Act to 
be maintained ? If it is to be maintained, execute it. Is it to be 



324 confidence in fttfi tfttftSflftf. 

abandoned ? If so, openly and candidly avow it. If it is not U. 
be executed, can anything be more absurd than to retain it upoi] 
the statute book ? The Tory party resent as a monstrous calumny 
the imputation that they wish to get rid of the Emancipation Act ; 
but the moment that an attempt is made to execute it, even to a 
small extent, they set up a cry as if Church and State were going 
to ruin. For the repeal of the Emancipation Act, I can see a 
reason — in the "desire to repeal it, I see a meaning — a baneful 
meaning — a pernicious meaning, but still a meaning ; but I cannot 
see a particle of reason nor a glimpse of meaning, in the conduct of 
those who say, " We will retain the Emancipation Act; those who 
say we desire to repeal it are calumniators and slanderers ; we are 
as sensible of the importance of that Act as any party in the coun- 
try," but who, the moment that an attempt is made to execute one 
jot or tittle of it, exclaim, " No, if you attempt to put the Act in 
force, we will agitate against you, for we, too, have our agitation: 
we will denounce you in our associations, for we, too, have our 
associations; our oracles shall be sent forth to talk of civil war, of 
rebellion, of resistance to the laws, and to give hints about the fate 
of James 2nd — to give hints that a Sovereign who has merely exe- 
cuted the law may be treated like a Sovereign who has most grossly 
violated the Jaw." I could understand a person who told me, that 
he had a strong objection to admit Roman Catholics to power 
or office in England ; but how any man who professes not 
to think, that an invidious distinction should be made between 
Catholic and Protestant, can bring himself to the persuasion tha* 
the Roman Catholics in this country enjoy more than a fair share 
of official power and emolument, I own passes my comprehension. 
What is the proportion of Roman Catholics to the whole popula 
tion of the kingdom ? About one fourth. What is the proportion 
of Roman Catholic Privy Councillors ? Perhaps three to two hun- 
dred. And what, after all, is the dignity of a Privy Councillor! 
— what power does the seat of a Privy Councillor, merely as such. 



CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 325 

Confer? Are not the hon. Gentlemen opposite Pjivy Councillors; 
If a change of administration were effected to-morrow, and the 
right lion. Gentlemen opposite were to come into office, would not 
those whom they displaced, be still Privy Councillors f In point 
of fact, the seat of a Privy Councillor absolutely confers no power 
whatever. Yet, we are seriously called upon to believe, that men, 
who think it monstrous that this mere futile honorary distinction 
should be given to three Ron. an Catholics, do still in their hearts 
desire to maintain a law by which a Roman Catholic may become 
Commander-in-chief, with all the promotion of the army in his 
hands ; First Lord of the Admiralty, with all the patronage of tli€ 
navy — Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, entrusted 
with all the interests of the country, as connected with foreign 
states — Secretary for the Colonies, with the whole conduct of om 
remoter dependencies — or First Lord of the Treasury, possessing 
the chief influence in every department of the state. I say, there- 
fore, that unless I suppose, that a great portion of the Opposition 
who have raised throughout England, the cry against the three 
Roman Catholic Privy Councillors — unless I suppose them more 
childish, more imbecile than I would willingly suppose any number 
of my fellow-countrymen to be, I must suspect that the abolition 
of the Catholic Emancipation Act, is the chief object of a great 
proportion of that party which now ranges itself in direct hostility 
to the Government. The right hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel) is, in 
my opinion, the same that he was in 1829; but his party, instead 
of being the same, is worse than it was at that period. The diffi- 
culty of governing Ireland, in opposition to the feelings of the great 
body ot the people, is, I apprehend, now as great as ever it was. 
The right hon. Baronet, last year, was deeply impressed with that 
difficulty. The impossibility of governing Ireland in conformity 
with the sense of the great body of the people, and, at the same 
time, in conformity with the views and opinions of his own follow- 
ers, is now, I apprehend, as great as ever. What, then, is to bo 



§26" CONFIDENCE IN TtlE MINISTRY. 

the end of an Administration of which the right lion. Barone! 
clioukl be head ? Supposing the right lion. "Baronet to come into 
office by the vote to-night, should I be wrong if I were to prophesy 
that, three years hence, he would be more vilified by the Tory 
party, than the present Government has ever been ? Should I be 
very wrong, if I were to prophesy, that all the literary organs of 
his party now forward to sound his praise, would be amongst the 
foremost, the boldest, and the loudest to denounce him ? Should 
T be very wrong if I were to prophesy that he would be burnt in 
effigy by the very people who are now clamorous to toast his 
health ? Should 1 be very wrong if I were to prophesy that the 
very party who now crowd the House to vote him into power, 
would then crowd the lobby to bring Lord Melbourne back ? Yes, 
already have I seen the representatives of the Church, and of the 
Universities of England, crowding the lobby of the House, for the 
purpose of driving the right lion. Baronet from the place to which 
they had previously raised him. I went out with them myself, 
when the whole body of the Tory Gentlemen — all the Represent- 
atives of the Church and of the Universities — united to force the 
right hon. Baronet from the position which he occupied in the 
councils of his Sovereign. I went out into the lobby, as the right 
hon. Baronet, the Member for Pembroke (Sir James Graham), will 
bear me witness, when those Gentlemen went out for the purpose 
of bringing into power Lord Grey, Lord Al thorp, Lord Brougham, 
and Lord Durham. You may say, that they reasoned ill — perhaps 
they were weak — perhaps they did not see all that would happen. 
But so it was ; and what has been once may be again. As far as 
I can see my way, it is absurd to suppose, that the party of which 
the right hon. Baronet is the head, would be content with less from 
him than they would take from Lord Melbourne. T believe just 
the contrary. I believe, that of all men in the world, the right 
hon. Baronet is most the object of distrust to the party opposite. 
They suffer him to remain at their head, because his great abili- 



CONFIDENCE JX THE MINISTRY. 

ties, his eloquence, his influence are- necessary to them ; but they 
distrust him, because they never can forget that in the greatest 
crisis of his public life, he chose rather to be the victim of their 
injustice than to be its instrument. It is absurd to say, that that 
party will never be propitiated by any partition amongst thei* 
chiefs of the power or fruits of office. They can truly adopt the 
maxim, " measures not men." They care not who has the sword 
of state borne before him at Dublin — they list not who wears the 
badge of Saint Patrick on his breast — what they dislike, what they 
are invincibly opposed to, are the two great principles which had 
governed the administrations of Lord Normanby and Lord Ebring- 
ton — justice and mercy. What they want is not Lord Hadding- 
ton, or any other nobleman of their own party whom the right hon. 
Baronet (Sir Robert Peel) might appoint to the Viceroyalty of Ire- 
land ; but the tyranuy of race over race, and creed over creed. 
Give them this power, and you convulse the empire ; withhold it, 
and you break up the Tory party. Supposing the vote of to-night 
to be carried in the affirmative, the right hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel) 
would not be a month in office before the dilemma of 1829 would 
be again before him. With every respect for his intentions, with 
the highest opinion of his ability, I believe that at this moment it 
would be utterly impossible for him to head the Administration of 
this country without producing the most dreadful calamities to Ire- 
land. Of this I believe he was himself sensible when he was last 
year called upon to form an Administration. The state of the 
empire was not at that time very cheering. The Chartists were 
abroad in England — the aspect of Canadian affairs was not pleas- 
ing —an expedition was pending in the East which had not theij 
ended in success — discontent prevailed in the West Indies. Yet, in 
the midst of all these troubles, the discerning eye of the right hon 
Baronet left him in no doubt as to the quarter in which his real dan 
ger lay — he knew 'twas Ireland. The right hon. Baronet admitted 
tfiat his great difficulty would be in the government of Ireland, 1 



328 CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 

believe that the present ministry possessed the confidence of the 
great body of the people of Ireland ; and I believe that what it loes 
for the people of Ireland, it can do with less irritation from the oppo- 
site party in England, than the right hon. Baronet would find it 
possible to do. I believe that if, with the best and purest inten- 
tions, the right hon. Baronet were to undertake the Government 
cf this country, he would find that it was very easy indeed to lose 
the confidence of the party which raised him to power ; but very 
difficult indeed to gain that which the present Government happily 
possessed — the confidence of the people of Ireland. It is upon 
these grounds, and principally upon the question of Ireland, that I 
should be inclined to rest the case of the present Ministry. I know 
well, how little chance there is of finding here or anywhere an 
unprejudiced audience upon this subject. Would to God that" I 
were speaking to an audience that would judge this great contro- 
versy fairly and with an unbiassed mind, and as it will be judged 
by future ages. The passions which inflame us — the sophistries 
which delude us, will not last for ever. The paroxysms of faction 
have their appointed season, even the madness of fanaticism is but 
for a day. The time is coming when our conflicts will be to others 
as the conflicts of our forefathers are to us ; when our priests who 
convulse the State — our politicians who make a stalking-horse of 
the Church, will be no more than the Harleys and Sacheverells of 
a by-gone day ; and when will be told, in a language very different 
from that which now draws forth applause at Exeter Hall, the story 
of these troubled years. Then it will be said that there was a por- 
tion of the empire which presented a striking contrast to a portion 
of the rest. Not that it was doomed to sterility, for the soil was 
fruitful and well watered — not that it wanted facilities for com- 
merce and trade, for its coasts abounded in havens marked by 
nature to be the marts of the whole world— not that the people 
were too proud to improve these advantages or too pusillanimous 
to defend them, for in endurance of toil and gallantry of spirit 



CONFIDENCE TK" THE MINISTRY. 320 

(liey were conspicuous amongst the nations — but the bounty of 
nature was rendered unavailable from the tyranny of man. In the 
twelfth century this fair country was a conquered province, the 
nineteenth found it a conquered province still. During the interval 
main gieat changes took place in other parts of the empire, con- 
ducing in the highest degree to the happiness and welfare of man- 
kind ; but to Ireland they brought only aggravation and misery. 
The Reformation came, bringing with it the blessings of Divine 
truth and intellectual liberty. To Ireland it brought only religions 
animosity, to add flame and fuel to the heats of national animosity, 
and to give, in the name of " Papist," anothei war-cry 1o animate 
the struggle between England and Ireland. The Revolution came, 
bringing to England and Scotland civil and religious liberty — to 
Ireland it brought only persecution and degradation. In 1829 
came Catholic Emancipation, but it came too late, and came too 
ungraciously — it came as a concession made to fear ; it was not 
followed nor accompanied by a suitable line of policy. It had 
excited many hopes — it was followed by disappointment. Then 
came irritation and a host of perils on both sides. If agitation 
produced coercion, coercion gave rise to fresh agitation : the diffi- 
culties and danger of the country thickened on every hand, until 
at length arose a Government which, all other means having failed, 
determined to try the only means that have never vet been fairly 
and fully applied to Ireland — humanity and justice. The State, so 
long the step-mother of the many, and the mother only of the few, 
became now the common parent of all the great family. The grea 4 , 
body of the people began to look upon the Government as a kind 
and beneficent parent. Battalion after battalion — squadron after 
squadron — was withdrawn from the shores of Ireland ; yet every 
day property became more secure, and order more manifest. Such 
symptoms as cannot be counterfeited — such as cannot be disguised 
— began to appear; and those who once despaired of that great 
portion of the commonwealth, began to entertain a confident hope 



336 - COxfrtbEXCE IN THE xiiNisi'KV. 

that it would at length take its place among the nations of Eu« 
rope, and assume that position to which it is entitled by its own 
natural resources, and by the wit and talent of its children. This, 
I feel, the history of the present Government of Ireland will one 
day prove. Let it thus go on ; and then as far as I am con- 
cerned, I care not what the end of this debate may be, or whether 
we stand or fall. That question it remains with the House to 
decide. Whether the result will be victory or defeat I know not ; 
but I know that there are defeats not less glorious than even vie 
tory itself; and yet I have seen and I have shared in some glori 
ous victories. Those were proud and happy days — even my right 
lion. Friend who last addressed you will remember them, — those 
were proud and happy days when, amidst the praises and blessings 
of millions, my noble Friend led us on in the great struggle for the 
Reform Bill — when hundreds waited around our doors till sun-rise 
to hear the tidings of our success — and when the great cities of the 
empire poured forth their populations on the highways to meet the 
mails that were bringing from the capital the tidings whether the 
battle of the people was lost or won. Those days were such days 
as my noble Friend cannot hope to see again. Two such triumphs 
would be too much for one life. But, perhaps, there still awaits 
him a less pleasing, a less exhilarating, but not a less honourable 
task, the task of contending against superior numbers, through 
years of discomfiture, to maintain those civil liberties — those rights 
of conscience which are inseparably associated with the name of 
his illustrious house. At his side will not be wanting men who, 
against all odds, and through all the turns of fortune, amidst evil 
days and evil tongues, will defend to the last, with unabated spirit, 
the noble principles of Milton and Locke. He may be driven from 
office — he may be doomed to a life of opposition — lie may be madu 
the mark for all the rancour of sects which may hate each othei 
with a deadly hate, yet hate his toleration more — he may be 
exposed to the fury of a Laud on one side, and to the fanaticism 



CONFIDENCE IN" THE MINISTRY. 331 

of a Praise-God-Barebones — but a portion of the praise which we 
bestow on the old martyrs and champions of freedom will not !>e 
refused by posterity to those who have, in these our days, endea- 
voured to bind together in real union, sects and races, too long 
hostile to each other, and to efface, by the mild influence of a 
parental Government, the fearful traces which have been left by 
the misrule of ages. 



332 



THANKS TO THE INDIAN ARMY.* 

FEBRUARY 6, 1840. 

He could not refrain from expressing his high gratification at the 
unanimity of the House on this very interesting occasion, and at 
the manner especially in which the right hon. Baronet [Sir R. Peel] 
had expressed himself in reference to the conduct of the British in 
India. It was not his intention to enter into any of the politica. 
questions which might be considered in connection with this expe- 
dition, but he wished to make a remark upon what had fallen from 
the right hon. Baronet in reference to Lord Auckland. The righu 
hon. Gentleman had omitted all mention of a case of the highest 
importance — the case of Lord Minto — to whom, after the reduction 
of Java, the thanks of the House were awarded for the part which 
he had taken in superintending the military arrangements ; nor 
was the right hon. Baronet correct in supposing that Lord Welles- 
ley had only received the thanks of Parliament as Captain-general, 
since he also received the thanks of the House in connection with 
the taking of Seringapatam, when he did not act as Captain-gene- 
ral. He quite conceded to the right hon. Baronet the right, and 
he fully admitted the propriety, of reserving his opinion as to the 
general policy under which the expedition took place, till the 
results were known ; but his own conviction was, that this great 
event would be found, in its results, highly conducive to the pros- 
perous state of our finances in India, and that, as a measure of 
economy, it would be found not less deserving of praise than it 
confessedly was in a military point of view. He could bear witness 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol li. p. 1334-1886. 



HUNKS TO THE INDIAN AiiMY. 333 

to some of the circumstances to which his right lion. Friend had 
alluded. Among many peculiarities of our Indian empire there 
was no one more remarkable than this — that the people whom we 
governed there were a people whose estimate of our power some- 
times far exceeded the truth, and sometimes fell far short of it. 
They knew nothing of our resources; the)' were ignorant of our 
geographical position ; they knew nothing of the political condition 
of the relative power of any of the European states. They saw us 
come and go, but it was upon an element with which they were 
not acquainted, and which they held in horror. It was no exag- 
geration to state that not merely the common people, but the upper 
classes — nay, even the ministers of the native provinces — were, 
almost without exception, so profoundly ignorant of European 
affairs that they could not tell whether the King of the French or 
the Duke of Modena was the greatest potentate. Further, he could 
tell the House this — when he was in India there was a restless, 
unquiet feeling existing in the minds of our subjects, neighbours, 
and subsidiary allies — a disposition to look forward to some great 
change, to some approaching revolution ; to think that the power 
of England was no longer what it had been proved to be in former 
times. There was a disposition to war on the part of Ava and 
other states; on every side, in short, there had prevailed a feeling 
in the public mind in India, which, unchecked, might have led the 
way to great calamities ; but this great event, this great triumph 
at Ghuznee, acted so signally by the British troops, had put down, 
with a rapidity hardly ever known in history, this restless and 
uneasy feeling ; and there never was a period at which the opinion 
of our valour and skill, and what was of equal importance, the 
confidence in our " star," was higher than it now was in India. 
He believed that the right hon. Baronet opposite would find reason 
to think that all the expense incurred by these thousands of camels 
and thousands of troops was sound and profitable economy. He 
bad seen something of the brave men who defended our Indian 



THANKS TO THE INDIAN ARMY. 

empire, and it had been matter of great delight to him to see the 
warm attachment to their country and their countrymen which 
animated them in that distant land, and which added a ten-fold 
force to the zeal and vigour with which they performed their ardu- 
ous duties. While he was on this point, let him remark that there 
was a disposition in that gallant service to imagine that they were 
not sufficiently appreciated at home ; to think that the Indian ser- 
vice was not so highly considered in England as other services not 
less able, nor performed with less jeopardy, in other countries. It 
was extraordinary to see the interest, with what gratification, the 
smallest scrap, the merest line, in an English newspaper, conveying 
any praise on this service, was received by them, and their delight 
would be extreme when they came to read the vote of thanks 
which had been conferred on them unanimously by the House of 
Lords, and which he trusted would be passed as unanimously by 
the House of Commons, the more especially accompanied as it was 
.by the testimony to their merits borne by the greatest general that 
England ever produced. At the same time that this well-merited 
tribute conferred the highest pleasure on the brave men who shared 
in the expedition, it would serve as a powerful inducement to every 
other man in that gallant service to expose himself to every peril 
and every privation when the interests of the empire required it. 



8Aft 



PRIVILEGE— STOCKDALE v. HANSARD— BILL TO 
SECURE PUBLICATION * 

MARCH 6, 1840. 

He promised not to detain the House for more than a few minutes 
but lie confessed he had listened with so much pain to the expres 
sions of his noble Friend, and of one or two other Gentlemen 
with whom, during the former proceedings upon this subject, he 
had most cordially concurred, that he was exceedingly unwilling to 
allow the question to go to a division without explaining, very 
briefly, the ground upon which he should give his vote. He had 
not as yet taken any part in the discussions upon this question, 
lie would not ao-aiu i>o over the ground which others had alreadv 
trod with an ability and eloquence which he was sensible he could 
only feebly imitate. He would only say, in general, that he 
believed the House of Commons to be, by the law of the land, 
the sole judge of its own privileges — that lie believed the privilege 
of publication to be by the law of the realm one of the privileges 
of the House — that he believed it to be a privilege essential to 
the due discharge of the duties of the House — that he believed 
the decision of the Queen's Bench, which attacked that privilege, 
to have been a decision founded not on law nor on reason, and that 
he never could give his support to any proposition that he con- 
ceived would tend to render that privilege doubtful. If the pro- 
position now before the House were for a law to provide that 
henceforth this privilege should belong to the House of Commons, 
to such a proposition he should give the strongest opposition. 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. 52, p. 1010-1016. 



336 feiLL TO SGCtJTIE PUBLICATION 

But such was not the proposition of his noble Friend. He could 
perfectly understand, that by proposing to enact that such or such 
should be the right and privilege of the House, a question might 
be raised as to whether such a right or privilege had previously 
existed. The declaration that it should exist hereafter might 
appear to carry with it the implication that it had not existeo 
previously. But the proposition in the present case was altogether 
different. All that was now proposed was by a new law to 
provide a new .remedy for enforcing an old and well-established 
and undoubted privilege. He would take instances from cases 
perfectly familiar to every one. Suppose any Gentleman should 
propose to bring in a law to provide that a person holding a bill 
of exchange for a good consideration, should be entitled to have 
an action against the acceptor of that bill, to recover payment. 
The consequence of such a proceeding would be to throw into a 
state of doubt the whole of the negotiable paper current throughout 
the kingdom. But if, on the other hand, a bill were proposed to 
this effect — that the means of holders of bills of exchange not 
being sufficient to enable them to recover payment, therefore other 
means should, by a new enactment, be extended to them — would 
any person tell him that a measure of such a nature, acknow- 
ledging the right to recover in the fullest extent, but giving to the 
holders of negotiable papers an additional remedy — would any 
one tell him that such a measure would, in the smallest degree, 
bring into question the previously existing right of the holders of 
bills of exchange to proceed against the acceptors to recover 
payment ? In point of fact, the proposition now before the House 
was not to provide, by a new law, that the House should have the 
privilege of publication — not to affect any of the existing remedies 
which the House already possessed for the vindication of its 
privileges — but simply to superadd a new remedy. It was not 
even proposed to substitute the new remedy -for the old ones. 
The bill proposed by his noble Friend left th« old remedies abso- 



bill to secure ptrfeLicAtroK. a£!? 

lutely untouched. If, after the passing of tins bill, any other person 
should think fit to imitate the example of Mr. Stockdale, and to set 
the privileges of the House at defiance, it would be as much as ever 
in the power of the House to send that person to prison. As he 
understood the bill, it did not acknowledge, did not in any way 
imply, that the House would not retain that power. It was founded 
merely upon this — that the remedies which the House now pos- 
sessed, were in some respects imperfect, in some respects" incon- 
venient. Did not every Member of the House acknowledge that 
fact ? The noble Lord had referred to conversations which took 
place out of that House. Was there a single Member of the 
House who, when he went into the lobby, would hesitate to admit 
that there were some imperfections — some inconveniences in the 
remedies which it at present possessed for the vindication of its 
privileges ? Was that a perfect remedy which applied onlj r to 
one half of the year — which protected the privilege of the House 
during the sitting of Parliament, but left it wholly unguarded 
during the recess ? Was that a perfect remedy which could only 
be applied by means of so large and so divided an assembly as 
the House of Commons ? The noble Lord had stated what he 
thought to be the cause why so many Gentlemen on the opposite 
side of the House had ranged themselves against, what he con- 
ceived to be, the undoubted privilege of the House. But, 
whatever the cause, could there be any doubt as to its effect ? 
Was there any doubt that there was within the walls of that 
House, a large body of Gentlemen who had done everything in 
their power to prevent the House from enforcing its privileges ? 
What had been the loss of time upon this question ? Was it not 
a matter of regret, that more time than had been occupied in the 
discussion of the most important measures — measures in which 
the interests of every part of the empire were deeply concerned — 
had this year been devoted to the discussion of a subject vexatious 
and troublesome in itself, important no doubt in many particulars, 

VOL. T. 15 



$?-■£ KILL to SECURE PtitLtcATtOK. 

but singularly likely to be misconstrued and misunderstood by the 
people ? His noble Friend said, he thought it necessary for Ui€ 
vindication of the privileges of the House to imprison the sheriffs ; 
but at the same time he said he acquitted them of all moral 
blame. Was it not a matter of regret that the House to vindicate 
itself should be obliged to imprison persons guilty of no moral 
blame ? Was that a convenient course ? Let the House consider 
the case of the sheriff. He was not a person who sought his 
office — not a person who was fined for his office. He was taken 
and compelled to serve whether he would or not. He often made 
o;reat interest to be exempted. " No matter," said the right hon. 
Gentleman, " you take him and compel him to serve you — you 
place him between two opposite forces — he receives commands and 
counter commands from both — he cannot obey both, and the 
moment he obeys one he is sent to prison for not obeying the 
other." Was that a state of the law desirable to be continued ? 
Was it a state of the law in which the great body of the people 
were likely to acquiesce ? He admitted that the House had no 
choice in the matter ; it was compelled to imprison the sheriffs. 
He admitted, also, that the noble Lord the member for Lancashire 
had stated last night, that if the House had not imprisoned the 
sheriffs, the Court of Queen's Bench would have imprisoned them. 
But that fact, so far from being an argument against the course 
now proposed by his noble Friend, appeared to him to furnish a 
strong ground in support of it. If a nation were forced to go to 
war, it was oftentimes compelled to make the innocent suffer with 
the guilty. If, for instance, there were a small neutral Power 
situated between two hostile and belligerent nations, howevei 
anxious that small power might be to preserve its neutrality, anc* 
to keep itself distinct from the quarrels of its neighbours, it would 
almost inevitably happen, that one or other of the two great 
Powers would find it necessary for the protection of its own imme- 
diate interests, or for the better prosecution of its hostilities, to 



BILL TO SECURE PUBLICATION. * 339 

encroach on the independence of the smaller State, and to mak« 
it an instrument in the advancement of its own views. This wad 
conspicuous during the last war in the case of Holland. We 
know how little Holland liked Bonaparte — how it detested his 
continental system, how it hated his dominion — yet we were at 
last forced to blockade her ports, and to treat her with severity, 
because it was essential to the preservation of our own interests 
and our own independence. In the same way did he (Mr. 
Macaulay) defend the necessity which compelled the House of 
Commons to send the sheriffs to prison. But he maintained that 
this was a state of things which rendered it absolutely necessary 
for the House to resort to some legislative enactment to prevent a 
recurrence of similar difficulties for the future. He did not under- 
stand what a Legislature existed for, if not to meet such cases as 
these. If there were two powers in the State, neither of which 
was in the nature of a Court of Appeal from the other — if these 
two powers gave counter orders to the same officer, and had the 
power of imprisoning him if he disobeyed — if the officer, dis- 
tracted between the two, obeyed one and was immediately impri- 
soned by the other, surely, if ever there was a case in the world 
for legislative interference, that was one. Nay, he would go 
further : the Solicitor-General stated last night that the House had 
the power of commitment; and then went on to contend that all 
experience had shown that that power was sufficient to enable it 
to vindicate its privileges. No doubt it would be sufficient, if it 
were vested in the hands of a party who were ready to exercise It 
unsparingly and unmercifully. If the House were in all cases to 
do that, he certainly believed that it would have no difficulty in 
carrying its point. They all knew how the ancestor of his noble 
Friend the Member for Cornwall (Lord Eliot) was treated — how 
he was kept in prison till his spirits, health, and strength gave 
way — how his imprisonment was continued even to the hour of 
bis death, Hut in the present to ij wa,> impossible for t^e House 



3-10 BILL TO SECURE PUBLICATION. 

of Cbrimtdh's to pursue so harsh a course. Their own good nature 
would not allow them to do so. The feelings of the people would 
not permit them to do so. The very moment that the health or 
spirits of a prisoner began to suffer, that moment the House begar 
to relent, and either upon the instant, or shortly afterwards, the 
prisoner was set at liberty. So that when the House possesse *. 
itself of a prisoner of a robust and hardy constitution, it might 
have the power of completely vindicating its privileges, by detain- 
ing him in prison till the question at issue was arranged ; but if 
it happened to have a prisoner of a bilious and apoplectic habit, 
in that case its privileges must be abandoned, or only feebly 
asserted, because the health of the prisoner suffered from confine- 
ment. Even if the health of Mr. Stockdale himself should appear 
to be seriously affected by his imprisonment, it was certain that he 
would not long be detained in custodv. Under these circum- 
stances, it appeared to him, that the House was absolutely com- 
pelled to seek some other mode of protecting and vindicating its 
orivileffes. The noble Lord had asked, what would be the effect 
if this bill should be carried through the House of Commons, and 
lost in the House of Lords. He hoped that the bill would be 
carried through both branches of the Legislature. He hoped — 
most earnestly hoped — that the other House of Parliament would 
interfere tc save the country from the scandals and the horrors 
that would necessarily follow, if it drove the House of Commons, 
in absolute self-defence, to use the whole of the extreme power 
which it possessed for the protection of its privileges. But if the 
Bill should unhappily miscarry in the House of Lords, then lie 
said this, that the House of Commons would be absolved. They 
would have gone to the other House, not in a degrading or 
humiliating manner — they would have said, " We do possess the 
power of vindicating our privileges — we have the power, if we 
please, of throwing the whole of the country into confusion — we 
can stop the supplies — we can stop the Mutiny Act — there ; s no 



BILL TO SECURE PUBLICATION. 341 

power which any political body can possess which we do not 
possess — we have the power of imprisoning every man vho 
invades our privileges — we can commit every judge in the country, 
not being a peer, if he do not respect our privileges. We have 
the power of confining every ministerial officer who shall execute 
the sentence of any court, if that sentence be at variance with 
our privilege; but it is not our wish, by means like these, to 
enforce even the most necessary of our privileges. We apply for 
a new remedy, not because we have not in our power remedies 
that are sufficiently stringent and effective, but because those 
remedies are such, that some of them cannot be applied without 
the dissolution of society, and a cruel pressure upon individuals; 
we have remedies sufficiently severe — we look to you, my Lords, 
to assist us in adopting one of a milder nature; we have remedies 
sufficiently powerful to enable us to attain our ends, but which, 
from their severity, would be disagreeable to the great body of the 
people — we ask you, my Lords, to give us a remedy which the 
whole of the people, without exception, will unite in approving." 
He believed that by going before the House of Lords in that 
manner, they would have the post of no mean suitors. He 
believed that there would be nothing degrading on the part of 
the House of Commons, in bringing forward a measure the object 
of which was to secure the liberties of the people, and at the 
same time to enable the House to act with greater lenity in all its 
dealings with those who, from the misfortune of their situations, 
or from some other cause over which they had little or no control, 
had been guilty of violating its privileges. He believed that, if 
the House of Lords refused to give its assent to such a measure, 
the House of Commons would then be fairly supported by public 
opinion in the adoption of measures much stronger than any to 
which it had yet resorted. He believed that measures stronger 
even than those suggested by the hon. and learned member for 
Dublin, would rind a support out of the House greater than was 



342 BILL TO SECURE PUBLICATION*. 

imagined by any who sat within the House, if, having proposed ? 
mild remedy for the protection of its privileges, the House should 
be told by the Lords, that to that mild remedy they would not 
give their assent. 



343 



THE ARMY ESTIMATES * 

MARCH 9, 1840. 

His noble Friend (Lord John Russell) had relieved him from thf 
necessity of making some remarks which otherwise he should have- 
thought necessary in reply to the speech of the lion. Member for 
Kilkenny. He should, therefore, at present only say that any 
person who had heard that speech, and who was unacquainted 
with the previous transactions of the country, would have been 
very slow to believe that the military establishment proposed this 
year was actually lower in men and charge than that for which 
the hon. Gentleman himself both voted and spoke. It was only 
on the 2d of August last, when his noble Friend proposed a sup- 
plemental estimate of 75,000/. and an addition of men amounting 
to 5,000, that the hon. Gentleman declared he would not take on 
himself the responsibility of refusing that sum of money and 
those men, which his noble Friend declared necessary for the 
peace and honour of the state. He should be glad to know why 
the arguments which the hon. Gentleman had used that evening 
might not, on the 2d of August last year, have been urged with 
equal effect. All the lion. Gentleman had said respecting the 
refusal of justice to Canada, all he had said as to the refusal of jus- 
tice to England, all he had said of those monopolies, some of which 
he, like the hon. Gentleman, disapproved, as pressing severely on 
the people of this country, and all he had said as to the condition 
of the country, might be said exactly with equal propriety and 
effect on the 2nd of August last year, as it was now. In bringing 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. lii. p. 1087-1096. 



344 ARMY ESTIMATES. 

forward the estimates, which lie should have the honour of pro- 
posing to be laid on the table, he should have the satisfaction, at 
all events, of thinking that he could not be found liable to the 
charge of profusion, if the Hon. Gentleman was acquitted of it. 
The estimate brought forward by his noble Friend, the Member 
for Northumberland, in February, was G,l 19,088/. To that -urn, 
in August, was added 75,000/., making the whole cl argo 
6,194,068/. The whole charge this year would be 40,000/. more; 
but in this sum there was included a considerable charge for 
Indian troops, which would be defrayed out of the Indian revenues. 
The whole force estimated in February, 1839, including the force 
for India, was 109,818 men, and this year it was 121,112, making 
an addition of 11,294, but of these 7,746 were employed in 
defence of India, and chargeable on the revenues of that country. 
There remained an increase of 3,548 to be added to the 5,000 
men voted last August. The additional force that he should have 
to propose was 4,088. It might be proper to explain the mode in 
which this addition was made, and the more so, because it would 
refute, he thought, conclusively, an invidious insinuation of the 
hon. Member for Kilkenny. About 500 were to be added by an 
increase of three companies to the 1st West-Indian regiment, and 
he trusted that such a sum as was requisite would not be refused 
for raising a force which would spare our own countrymen from 
the hardships inseparable from foreign service. About 102 men 
were provided for Malta, which the local authorities declared to be 
absolutely necessary, not only for the garrison btit for port-guard. 
A small militia (so to speak) was required for Bermuda. It was 
thought desirable that a portion of the youth of Bermuda should 
be formed, not as a separate company, but as a sort of body 
appended to the best troops from England, and thus initiated in 
the best system of military discipline ; and after having been for 
some time so attached, to return to the mass of the population, 
being relieved by a new set of young men. So that, in the course 



ARMY ESTIMATES. 345 

of a few years, every man would be trained to the use of arms, 

and be capable of bearing tliein should the public service require 

it. In this manner was made the addition of 500 men which he 

had spoken of. The remaining addition was made by 65 men 

being added to every one of the 81 battalions of infantry in the 

United Kingdom ; thus raising each from 835 to 900 men. 

These 65 men consisted of 4 Serjeants, 4 corporals, and 57 privates. 

To every one of the 20 battalions engaged last year in India 250 

men were added, raising each from 853 to 1,103 men ; and, lastly, 

of the two battalions transferred to India, the increase was made 

from 835 to 1,103, being an addition of 268. And now he wished 

particularly to call the attention of the House to this circumstance. 

because the hon. Gentleman the Member for Kilkenny had said, 

lie had observed that every Government had an interest in 

proposing an increased force, because it placed at their disposal 

many comfortable things. Now the whole additional regimental 

charge for the increase to the 81 battalions he had referred to, did 

not afford the Government or the Horse Guards, the means of 

obliging a single acquaintance, or conferring a favour on one ten- 

ponnd householder. He wished the House to understand, that if 

the number of 4,408 which were to be added to the army, were 

struck off, no means of disarming opposition, or gaining support, 

would be taken away from the Crown. If aii} T Gentleman took 

the trouble of looking throiiQ-h the different ranks of the service, 

he would find that the charge for officers this year was diminished 

by 2,000/. The only addition to the foreign force which would 

coma out of the revenues of this country was the three additional 

companies added to the 1st West-Indian Regiment. Of the 

121,112 men, who it was proposed should compose the military 

establishment, 28,213 would be charged on foreign revenue, leaving 

92,899, for whose maintenance this country was to provide. This 

estimate was somewhat confused, by having included in it 572 

men, who were not actually charged on this country, but who, a> 

46* 



346 ARMY ESTIMATES. 

recruiting companies of Indian regiments, were included in the. 
Mutiny Act. Any man disposed to approve of this measure, 
would have no difficulty in approving of the many parts of the 
estimate which contributed to it. The increase in the force suffi- 
ciently explained the increase in the regimental charge in the 
medical department, and the small increase for religious books and 
tracts granted to the soldiers. Considering that 20,000 men had 
been raised within the last year, that the applications for works of 
this nature had been numerous and pressing, and the assistance of 
benevolent societies not sufficient to supply this want, he thought 
lie was justified in allotting 200/. to this purpose. Here was one 
item about which he believed it was usual to make some state- 
ment, and he should say a few words respecting it. As to the 
good-conduct pay, there was not an increase but a diminution. 
The full effect of it would not be felt until 1843. The principle 
of a good conduct-warrant was this, that a soldier who had 
behaved well during seven years, received an additional Id. a-day 
to his pay. Every soldier, since 1830, had the option of calling 
the old additional pay the good-conduct pay. The former was 
superior in this respect, that it could not be taken away unless by 
court-martial, and it was no less honourable than secure, for the 
soldier entitled to it had the power of wearing the good-conduct 
badge. The consequence was, that in 1840, at which time the 
soldiers enlisted in 1833 would have completed their seven years, 
we might expect a considerable addition to the soldiers receiving 
good-conduct pay. But it was not until 1843 that the effects of 
the new system, which he confidently expected would be found 
highly beneficial, could be ascertained. The number of the men 
wearing the good-conduct badge was about 13,000. He had felt 
it necessary to make a slight addition to the article of provisions, 
forage, &c. This he had estimated at 245,000/., and he saw little 
reason to expect a falling off in that charge. The reason was 
this ; It wan known to t]xe committee that the Australian eol n|e& 



AttMY ESTIMATE $4T 

had suffered severely from calamities, which seemed to be a set off 
against the physical blessings with which they were endowed. 
The men had suffered from the effects of a most cruel drought; 
they had been excluded from the benefits of tea, and of vegetables 
in their soup, and in consequence of the high price of provisions 
they had been reduced from three to two meals a day, one of 
which was scanty and unpalatable, consisting only of oatmeal. 
These privations had fallen with the utmost cruelty upon those 
to whom our gallant men were most attached, and the medical 
men reported that the effects of the scarcity were visible upon the 
women and children attached to the regiments. Under these cir- 
cumstances, it would be impossible to maintain proper and efficient 
discipline, and therefore, if even all considerations of humanity 
were discarded, policy alone would dictate attention to that point. 
In fact, to a certain and partial extent, discipline had already 
given way, and in one regiment the crime of theft had spread to 
some extent. It was, in consequence, therefore, of the distress 
which the gallant and deserving men serving in the colonies had 
suffered that he had made this addition of 5,0007. to the estimates. 
In the estimate there were three charges upon which, as they 
were perfectly new, it would be necessary to enter somewhat into 
detail. The first was a charge of 3,500/. for schoolmistresses. 
He saw some of his hon. Friends near him smiled, but they were 
perhaps not aware, as indeed he himself was not until a few 
weeks ago, of the strong reason there existed for this charge. 
The number of female children actually accompanying our regi- 
ments, was not less than 10,000. Those children were in the most 
emphatic manner called " the children of the State." For the 
public service they were hurried from place to place — from Malta 
to Gibraltar, from Gibraltar to the West-Indies — from the West 
InJies to Halifax, as the common weal might require. It would, 
therefore, be inexcusable if we did not provide these, at a small 
expense, with some means of instruction. Ever since 1811 a 



348 AiiMf" MSHMAfftB. 

schoolmaster ahd been attached to every regiment, and he thought 
that there should be a depot for the instruction of female children 
also, under the superintendence of a schoolmistress, who might be 
probably the wife of a serjeant, and whose duty would be to 
instruct them in reading, writing, needlework, and the rudiments 
of common knowledge ; with such simple precepts of morality 
and religion as a good plain woman of that rank might be sup- 
posed capable of imparting to them. The next vote to which he 
had to call the attention of the committee was 10,000/. for the 
formation of a veteran battalion in Canada, where desertions had 
occurred to an extent unknown elsewhere. About six years ago 
an inquiry had been made, and it was found — there being there at 
that time 2,500 rank and file — that desertions had taken place to 
the number of G63, while, during the same period, the desertions 
from the whole British army had been only 2,240. These deser- 
tions in Canada had not been confined to bad and disreputable 
characters — non-commissioned officers and men of respectability 
and good conduct had deserted. Nor was this symptom of 
desertion to be ascribed to distress, for many had gone away 
leaving behind them their necessaries and arrears of pay. Why 
desertion should take place more frequently in North America 
than in any other part of the empire it was not difficult to explain. 
In this country, the situation of the soldier was as comfortable, lie 
might say more so, than that of the labourer, to which class 
generally the soldier belonged. In many of the colonies physical 
difficulties opposed themselves to flight. When in Malta, the 
soldiers were surrounded by sea ; when at the Cape, they could 
only escape from their .quarters to fly to the dwellings of savages ; 
and as to India, he could imagine no situation more miserable 
than that of a deserter in that country, wandering amidst its vast 
regions, amongst a people of a strange race and colour, and his 
footsteps pursued by the power of British law. But with respect 
to the American colonies, the ease was widely different. There 



ARMY Estimates. ?49 

the facilities of escape to the United States were many, and the 
temptation strong. The soil was flourishing, and the wages of 
labour high. The consequence was that the high wages, but 
still more the exaggerated representations that were put forth of 
the ease and luxury enjoyed by the labourer in America, had con 
stantly drawn away our soldiers from Canada. Several plans had 
been proposed for meeting this evil. It had been proposed, and 
he thought wisely, that Canada should be the last point in rotation, 
to which the troops on colonial service should be sent. There 
would then be a great number of men with additional pay and 
good conduct pay, and those higher advantages would tend to 
keep the men faithful to their colours. It had also been thought 
that advantages would arise, and the temptation to which he had 
adverted be counteracted, if the Government were to hold out to 
the oldest and most tried of the troops in Canada a sort of 
military retirement, which should serve as a reward to those whc 
remained faithful to their colours. Such had been the opinion of 
his noble Friend, the late Secretary at War, and of Lord Seaton, 
and he had reason to believe that that opinion was general ly 
entertained amongst those who possessed the best information 
upon the subject. The precise details of the plan had not yet 
been made out, and much correspondence must take place before 
it could be produced ; but as it was not improbable that, before 
the House again assembled, some regiments would be removed 
from Canada, it would be desirable that some men of good 
character should be induced to remain there. On these grounds 
he was induced to ask the House for the additional grant of 
10,000/. on account. There was also a sum of 5,000/. on account, 
for the purpose of forming a corps for service in St. Helena — a 
place which required to be defended not according to the ordinary 
system. The whole charge for the land force then was 3,511,870/. 
for the present year. That applied for last year, including tliu 
supplemental estimate, was 3,40G,&82/. 11'. The increase, there- 



850 XUUt ESTIMATES. 

fore, on this part of the charge was 15,487/. He now came tc 
the staff, in which, in the Home Department, there was an increase, 
but a corresponding decrease on the foreign staff. On the whole 
there was an increase of about 550/. the reasons for which were to 
be found in the state of the provinces of New Brunswick and 
Nova Scotia, where it had been thought desirable that that which 
had hitherto been a major-general's command should be changed 
into a lieutenant-general's command, and it was thought that, ii 
consequence of the high responsibility attached to that station, it 
should be filled, by an officer of great talents, and receiving addi- 
tional pay. Why the charge for Canada was increased, it was 
unnecessary for him to state. He did not know whether hon, 
Gentlemen were aware how this part of the estimates was formed — 
they were framed from the actual expenditure of the last year of 
which they had the accounts — thus the estimate for 1839 was 
framed upon that of 1837, and that of 1840 upon that of 1838, 
With respect to Jamaica, the addition was occasioned by the 
refusal of the Assembly to vote those allowances which used to be 
considered as matters of course. The whole charge for the staff 
in 1839 was, in round numbers, 155,000/., while that for the 
present year was 164,000/. being an increase of 9,000/. He was 
sorry to say, that in consequence of the haste with which these 
estimates had been prepared, there was an error in the third line 
of the page, containing the head Public Departments. The item 
stood there at 5,016/. 17$. 6d., but it ought to be 6,016/. 17s. 6d. 
With respect to the Royal Military College, it was unnecessary for 
him to say anything; and with respect to the Royal Military 
\sylum, the estimate for this year was 16,701/. 9s. 87., while that 
for last year was 17,486/. 3s-. In the next item there was an 
increase ; it was in the charge for volunteer corps. The vote for 
last year was 79,136/. 1 8s., while that he asked in the present 
estimate was 92,993/. This had arisen from the expenses of 
calling out the yeomanry in aid of the civil power. H« believed 



AKMY ESTIMATE?. 

all would admit that, in the trying scenes of last year, tho 
yeomanry exhibited all the valour and firmness for which those 
corps were distinguished ; but in no instance, he believed, had they 
behaved with rigour and harshness, or otherwise than with pro- 
priety and discretion. While, then, the whole charge for effective 
estimates for last year was 3,807,073/., the charge for the present 
year was 3,845,450/. ; being an increase of 39,377/. He now 
came to the non-effective estimates. Under the head of Rewards 
for Service, there was a small reduction. The amount in 1839 
was 16,041/. 185. ; while for the present year it was 15,815/. 106*. 
Id., being a decrease of 226/. The pay for unattached general 
officers last year was 102,000/. ; this year it was 92,000/., being a 
reduction of 10,000/. The number of general officers deceased 
who had received that pay last year was fifteen, and the number 
promoted to regiments nine. The number of Chelsea pensioners 
had decreased upwards of 1,000, and he understood there was a 
balance in the hands of the hospital, and he thought they might 
venture to make a reduction of 16,667/. Before he sat down, he 
could not help making some few observations on what had fallen 
from the hon. Member for Kilkenny. He knew well how zealous 
that hon. Gentleman was in the cause of economy ; but he must 
be permitted to say that that hon. Gentleman had never given a 
vote so truly in favour of the cause of economy and of civil 
liberty, as when last August he voted for the increase of the army 
by 5,000 men, by which he now proposes to reduce it. He 
believed that that was a just and an economical vote. He had 
never for a moment doubted, that on any ^reat crisis that might 
befal this country, the force marshalled on the side of law ami 
order would be found to be irresistible, and that this great country 
never could be given over to the hands of freebooters ; but at the 
same time, when he considered the wealth of our great cities, it 
was not utterly impossible that a mob, exacerbated and infuriated 
\>y dishonest leaders, might have inflicted calamities that mi^h( 



352 ARMY ESTIMATES. 

have led to a crisis which the ingenuity and good fortune of years 
could scarcely have effaced. Once and once only, had this great 
metropolis been in the power of a mob, who for a short time had 
shown themselves to be stronger than the law, and that was on 
the occasion of the No Popery Riots in the time of Lord George 
Gordon. It was a matter of history that, at that time, a sum was 
awarded for compensation for injuries done to a single house, in a 
single street, greater in amount than that which was voted last 
year for the additional 5,000 men. Therefore he would repeat 
that the hon. Member for Kilkenny had never given a more 
economical vote than he did in the August of last year. It had 
been well remarked by Adam Smith, that though standing armies 
were found hostile to the liberty of the subject, yet that principle 
must be laid down with qualification. He believed that the 
remarks of that great man upon this subject were both ingenious 
and just. He believed that the question before the House a few 
months ago was simply, whether the force should be increased, or 
whether the Government should revert to the policy that had been 
tried by the administration of Mr. Pitt. He would say, then, that 
whoever voted on that occasion for that increase of force, voted 
for the House of Commons itself — for the freedom of the people — 
for the liberty of the press — for the security of property — in fact, 
for all the characteristics of a free state. Firmly was he convinced 
that the most happy and beneficial effects flowed from that vote. 
Nothing had since occurred that could justify her Majesty's Minis- 
ters in diminishing their means or their power of upholding and 
maintaining intact and uninjured the peace, the honour, the dignity 
and security of this realm. He therefore would place the vote in 
the hands of the Chairman, with the strongest confidence that it 
would receive the approbation of the Committee. The right 
hon. Gentleman concluded by moving, " That a number of land 
forces, not exceeding 93,4*71 men (exclusive of the men employed 
\U the Territorial Possessions of the East India Company), f'omuds- 



AKMF FJTIMATES. 



353 



sioned and non-commissioned officers included, be maintained 
for the service of the United Kingdom of Great Britain nnd 
Ireland, from the 1st day of April, 1840, to the 31st day of 
March, 1841 " 



i>54 



THE WAR WITH CHINA * 

afril 7, 1840. 

If the right hon. Baronet (Sir J. Graham), in rising as the pro- 
poser of an attack, owned that he felt overpowered with the 
importance of the question, one who rose in defence, might cer- 
tainly, without any shame, make a similar declaration. And he 
must say, that the natural and becoming anxiety which her 
Majesty's Ministers could nut but feci as to the judgment which the 
House might pass upon the papers which. had been presented to 
them, had been considerably allayed by the terms of the motion of 
the right hon. Baronet. It was utterly impossible to doubt the 
power of the right hon. Baronet, or his will to attack the pro- 
ceedings of the present Administration ; and he must think it a 
matter on which her Majesty's Ministers might congratulate them- 
selves, that, on the closest examination of a series of transactions 
so extensive, so complicated, and on some points so disastrous, such 
an assailant could produce only such a resolution. In the first 
place, the terms of the resolution were entirely retrospective, and 
not only so, but they related to no point of time more recent than 
a year ago ; for he conceived that the rupture between this country 
and China must date from the month of March, 1839, and there 
had been no omission and no despatch of a later date that could 
have been the cause of the rupture of our friendly relations. He 
conceived, therefore, that the present resolution was one which 
related entirely to past transactions, and while he did not dispute the 
right of the right hon. Baronet to found a motion, or the right of the 

* JJ$asard, 3d Series, vol liii. p. 704-'72Q. 



war with mix A. 355 

House to pass any vote censuring any bygone misconduct oti 
the part of her Majesty's Ministers, he must at the same time feel 
gratified that the right lion. Baronet did not censure any portion 
of the present policy of the Government, and that he did not think 
fit in the present motion to raise any question as to the propriety 
of the measures, which, since the year 1839, her Majesty's Minis- 
ters had adopted. He saw, also, with pleasure that the right hon. 
Gentleman charged the Administration with no offence of commis- 
sion ; that he imputed to them no impropriety of conduct, nc 
indiscretion, no step which had either lowered the national honour 
or given to China any just cause of offence. All the complaint 
Avas, that they had not foreseen what circumstances might by pos- 
sibility arise, and that they had not given power to the represen- 
tative of her Majesty to meet any such unforeseen circumstances ; 
and he must say that such a charge was one which required, and 
which ought, to receive, the most distinct, the fullest, and the most 
positive proof, because it was of all charges the easiest to make, 
and the easiest to support by specious reasoning, and, ai, the same 
time, it was one of the most difficult to refute. A man charged 
with a culpable act might defend himself from that act, but it was 
not possible in any series of transactions that an objection might 
not be made, that something might not have been done which, if 
Jone, would have made things better. The peculiarity of the case 
then before them was, that a grave charge had been brought 
against her Majesty's Ministers, because they had not sent sufficient 
instructions, and because they had not given sufficient power to a 
representative at a distance of fifteen thousand miles from them ; 
that they had not given instructions sufficiently full, and sufficiently 
precise, to a person who was separated from them by a voyage 
of five months. He was ready to admit, that if the papers then 
on the table of the House related to important negotiations with a 
neighbouring state, that if they related, for instance, to negotiations 
earned on in Paris, during which a courier from Downing-street 



3o6 WAR WITH CHTKA. 

could be dispatched and return in thirty-six hours, and could bt" 
again dispatched and again return in as short a period ; if such 
were the nature of the facilities for the parties negotiating, lie 
would say without hesitation that a foreign secretary giving 
instructions so scanty and so meagre to the representative of the 
British Government w r as to blame. But he said, also, that the con 
trol which might be a legitimate interference with functionaries 
that were near, became an useless and a needless meddling with 
the functionaries at a distance. He might with confidence appeal 
to Members on both sides of the House who were conversant with 
the management of our Indian empire, for a confirmation of what 
he had stated. India was nearer to us than was China ; with 
India, we were better acquainted than we were with China, and yet 
he believed that the universal opinion was, that India could be 
governed only in India. Indeed, the chief point which occupied 
the attention of the authorities at home was to point out the gene- 
ral line of conduct to be pursued ; to lay down the general prin- 
ciples, and not to interfere with the details of every measure. If 
hon. Members only thought in what a state the political affairs of 
that country would be if they were placed under the sole guidance of 
a person at a distance of even less than 15,000 miles, they would 
at once see how absurd such a proposition was. They would see a 
dispatch written during the first joy at the news of the peace of 
Amiens received while the French invading army was encamped at 
Boulogne. They would find a despatch written while Napoleon was 
in Elba, arriving when he was the occupant of the Tuilleries ; and 
they would have positive instructions sent whilst he was in the 
Tuilleries to come into operation when he was removed to St. 
Helena. In India, also, occurrences were continually and rapidly 
taking place, so that the state of things in Bengal or in the Car- 
natic would have changed long before the specified instructions 
ctould have arrived, and they all knew that the great men who had 
retained for us that country, Lord Clive and Lord Hastings, had 



WAR WITH CHINA. }$l 

Jone so bv treating particular instructions from a distance as s« 
mucli waste paper ; if they Lad not had the spirit so to treat then:, 
we should now have no empire in India. But the state of China 
made a stronger case still. Nor was this all. AVith regard 
to India, a politician sitting in Leadenhall-street, or in Cannon 
row, might not know the state of things at the distance of India, 
hut he might be acquainted with the general state of the country, 
its wants, its resources ; but with regard to China it should be 
recollected that that country was not only removed from us by a 
much greater distance than India, but that those who were per- 
mitted to go nearest knew but little of it; for over the internal 
policy of China a veil was thrown, through which a slight 
glimpse only could be caught, sufficient only to raise the imagina- 
tion, and as likelv to mislead as to give information. The right 
hon. Baronet had honourably told the House that the knowledge 
of Englishmen residing at Canton resembled the notions which 
might be acquired of our government, our army, our resources, our 
manufactures, and our agriculture, by a foreigner, who, having 
landed ai Wapping, ivas not allowed to go further. The advan- 
tages ol literature even,, which in other cases presented an oppor- 
tunity of holding personal inteicourse as well as looking into the 
character and habits of remote ages, afforded but little help in the 
cas^ of Ct.ina. Difficulties unknown in other countries there met 
the student at the very threshold ; so that they might count upon, 
their lingers those men of industry and genius, one of whom had 
been referred to that night, who had surmounted those difficulties, 
which were unequalled in the study of any other language 
which had an alphabet. And under these circumstances, with a 
countrv so far removed, and yet as little known to the residents at 
Canton itself as the central parts of Africa — under these circum- 
stances, he said, in spite of the jeers of lion. Goutleinen opposite, 
the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs could not be expected to 
give the same precise instructions to the representative of his Sove- 



358 WAR WITH fcttlKA. 

reign as he could to our Ministers at Brussels or the Hague. Thii 
was evidently the feeling of the Government of Earl Grey, of 
that Government to which the right hon. Baronet belonged, and 
for the acts of which he claimed, and rightly claimed, a full share 
of responsibility. The instructions, to which the right hon. 
Baronet was a party, did not go into detail — they laid down the 
broadest general principles — they simply told the representative of 
her Majesty to respect the usages of China, and to avoid by all 
means giving offence to the prejudices or the feelings of the 
Chinese. As for precise instructions, they never gave any. When 
the Duke of Wellington came into office, that great man, well versed 
as he was in great affairs, and knowing as he did, that even a man 
of inferior ability on the spot could judge better than the ablest man 
at a distance of 15,000 miles, in the only despatch which he 
addressed to a resident at Canton, contented himself with referring 
the Superintendent to the instruction of Lord Palmerston. Now, 
what he wished to impress on hon. Gentlemen was, that when 
charges were brought against the Government of omitting to 
give instructions, or omitting to empower our representative, or 
that by this omission had been produced a great and formidable 
crisis in the relations between this country and China, this charge 
ought to be sustained by the clearest, by the fullest, and by the 
most precise proof that such was one of the causes, if not the prin- 
cipal cause of such a crisis, and that proof the right hon. Baronet 
ai the course of his long and elaborate speech had altogether failed 
to give. He had selected from the evidence on the table a great 
mass of information that was interesting, and much that was by 
no means applicable to the only point on which the present motion 
could rest. What were the omissions in the instructions and in 
the power given to our representative ? The right hon. Baronet 
had read some despatches of the East India Company in 1832 ; 
and he had also discussed the conduct of Captain Elliott subse- 
quent to the uipture ; but he conceived that neither the one nor 



WAR WITH CHINA. 359 

the other was before the House ; that he had entirely forgotten to 
notice what act the Government might have done which it had not, 
and which might have prevented the present unfortunate position 
of affairs. What, however, were the omissions of which the right 
hon. Haronet complained? They were four in number. First, 
that the Government had omitted to correct a point in the Order 
in Council, which directed the Superintendent to reside in Canton ; 
secondly, that they had omitted to correct the Order in Council on 
the point which showed the Superintendent a new channel of com- 
munication with the Chinese government; thirdly, that they had 
omitted to act upon the suggestion of the memorandum made by 
the I Hike of Wellington to keep a naval force in the neighbour- 
hood of Canton ; and, fourthly, what was most important of all, 
that they did not give sufficient power to the superintendent to 
put down the illicit trade. He believed that there was not one 
oilier omission specifically mentioned in the able speech of the righ; 
hoit. Gentleman. Witli regard to the first omission, the answer 
was simple. It was true that the order in council, directing the 
superintendent to reside at Canton, had not been revoked by her 
M.i jest v's Government. But it was also true, that no dispute as 
to the residence of the superintendent had anything to do with 
the unfortunate rupture ; it was true that that dispute was perfectly 
accommodated. Captain Elliott said, in a letter dated Macao, 
March 18, 1837 :— 

" My Lord — A ship upon the point of sailing for Bengal, affords me a 
ju'op'pect of communicating rapidly with your Lordship, by the means of an 
overland mail of May. I seize this opportunity to transmit the translation 
of an edict, just procured through a private channel, containing the impe 
ri:il ,.l<-:»*ure, that I shall be furnished with a passport to proceed to 
(anion lor the performance of my duties. The official notification may be 
expected from Canton in the course of a few days. For the first time in the 
history of out intercourse with China, the principle is most formally 
admitted, that an officer of a foreign sovereign, whose functions are purely 
public, should reside in a city of the empire. His Majesty's Government 



360 WAR WlTH CHINA. 

may depend upon my constant, cautious, and earnest efforts to improve th< 
state of circumstances. I have, <fec. 

(Signed) ' Charles Elliott. " 

Tlieretbre, this point of omission which the right hon. Baronet 
made an article of charge against the Government was no charge at 
all ; for two years before the rupture the point had been fully conceded 
in the most formal and honourable manner by the Chinese authori- 
ties. And he would venture to say, that in no subsequent letter 
was there any document which indicated that the place of residence 
of the superintendent was any point in question. Therefore, lie 
said with confidence, that the first of the right hon. Baronet's 
omissions had not any groundwork on which it could rest. The 
second charge was, that the Government did not alter the order in 
council to direct the superintendent as to his future communica- 
tions with the Government, and did not tell him not to communi- 
cate as the supercargos used to do with the Chinese Government. 
To that alleged case of omission the answer was, that the Chinese 
Government had fully conceded the point. Negotiations had 
taken place between Captain Elliott and the Chinese authorities, 
and the dispute was, in fact, at an end. As to the question which 
arose, it was about the use of the word " Pin ;" the point was 
easily answered, because Captain Elliott did not adhere to the 
construction which was put upon it. He must say, that Captain 
Elliott, acting under the discretion which it was absolutely neces- 
sary that every Government should give to their officers at a dis- 
tance, had given up the point of superscription, and, therefore, the 
second omission imputed to the British Government by the right 
hon. Baronet had nothing to do with the present state of 
affairs. The third charge brought forward was, that the Govern- 
ment had not provided a vessel of war to be stationed upon the 
Chi?iese coast to be readv to act upon anv emero;encv which miodil 
H<rise ? What was the recommendation of the Puke of Wellington, 



WAft WITH CfliSA. 361 

in reference to this very subject? It was, that a vessel of 
war should be off Canton ready to act until the trade of the Bri- 
tish merchants should return to its proper channel. He wrote in 
reference to the state of things which existed at that time, but 
there was not one syllable in the despatch of the noble DtiKe which 
showed that that advice should extend beyond the continuance of 
the existing circumstances. His Grace said, that he should recom- 
mend that, until trade should resume its ordinary course, there 
should always be within reach of Canton a stout frigate or vessel 
of war ready to act in case of necessity ; but this charge was no 
made until four years after that advice was given, in the course of 
which Sir George Robinson had declared that affairs had been 
restored to their usual condition. The Duke of Wellington recom- 
mended that the frigate should be there only until trade should 
take its regular course. The right hon Baronet had told the House 
that, subsequently to that, Sir George Robinson had brought 
about a peaceable state of affairs ; and then, after that, when cir- 
cumstances had occurred which he wo lid venture to say no human 
mind could have foreseen, it was wondered at, and fault was 
found, that no vessel was at the spot pointed out. He was confi- 
dent that nothing was contained in any of the Duke of Welling- 
ton's prior despatches which could be taken to exhibit any desire 
on his part that there should be a naval force constantly upon the 
Canton station, to await any calamitous event which might take 
place. Then lie came to the fourth charge, which he thought was 
the most important ; for those to which he had already referred he 
conceived that there existed no ground whatsoever. The fourth 
point was, that the English Government, having legal authority to 
do so, had omitted to send to the superintendent at Canton proper 
powers for the purpose of suppressing the illicit trade which they 
knew was carried on there. In the first place, during a consider- 
able portion of time since the present administration had been in 
office, there were stronger reasons in existence than there had been 
vol. i. 10 



362 war witA ctitjcA. 

in the time of Lord Grey, or when the Duke of Wellington wa. 
Minister for Foreign Affairs, against sending over such powers 
There was this plain and obvious reason, that down to the month 
of May, 1838, the Foreign Secretary had very strong reasons 
to believe that it was in the contemplation of the government of 
China immediately to legalize the opium trade, which had undoubt- 
edly been carried on in disobedience to the existing law. It was 
quite clear from these papers, though it was not easy to follow all 
the windings of Chinese policy, that in 1836, the attention of the 
government of that country was called in a very peculiar manner 
to the opium trade. The system under which that trade had been 
carried on was this — it had been prohibited by law, but connived 
at in practice. The Chinese Government appeared to think that 
a worse state of things could not exist ; thac it produced all the 
evils of a contraband trade ,' that it gave rise to as much intem- 
perance as if there were no prohibition ; and, what they looked 
upon with equal regret, that the exportation of silver was likewise 
as great as if there was no prohibition upon it. That the then 
existing system could not last, seemed to have been the opinion of 
the Chinese authorities. Tang-Tzee, the able and ingenious Pre- 
sident of the Sacrificial Offices, who he was son*} to perceive had 
been dismissed, because dismissal in China, he believed, was a 
much more severe punishment than in England, had argued that 
it was unwise to prohibit the introduction of the drug ; that if it 
were desired by the people, whatever might be the amis*: of it by 
intemperance, no prohibition could keep it out ; and that a." both the 
revenue and the morals of the people would suffer by the continu- 
ance of a contraband trade, it was desirable to make the trade legi- 
timate, and tax the importation of the article. But Tchu-Sung 
appeared to be one of that class of statesmen, who, when they 
found that the laws were rendered niiaratorv, and that it was 
impossible to carry them into execution by altering their machi- 
nery, an .1 by opposing public feeling, made them nio--e stringent. 



WAR WITH CHINA. 363 

Tchu-Sung informed the Emperor that he had discovered in the 
course of his ministerial studies that the mode in which Europe 
had established her empire in several parts of Asia was, by the 
introduction of opium, which so weakened the intellect and ener 
vated the bodies of the inhabitants, that they were easily pouncec 
upon and made prisoners of by the Europeans. The opinion tha/ 
the trade would be legalized was entertained by Captain Elliott, 
and he could himself vouch for the fact, that the mercantile com- 
munity of Calcutta, during a part of the year 1837, decidedly 
believed that notification of the authorisation of the traffic by the 
Chinese government might be expected from day to day. It was 
not until the month of May, 1838, that a despatch arrived at the 
Foreign office, interfering with, or putting an end to that expecta- 
tion. That being the case, it was not strange that his noble Friend, 
the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, should have hesitated to send 
out an order to put down a trade which he had every reason to 
believe would have been made legitimate before such order could 
have reached the Chinese seas. But he (Mr. Macaulay) did not 
think it would have Wen at all desirable or rio-ht that such an 
order should have been sent out even in 1838. He thought that 
that House would have required of the Government a very clear 
account indeed, a very strong proof of the necessity or policy of 
such order, and that if they could not have furnished that proof 
the House would have been justified in calling them to a .sharp 
reckoning for sending out powers to the Superintendent authorising 
him to seize and send home any British subject who should have been 
found carrying on a trade which that superintendent might have pro- 
hibited. Without meaning to deny that there were extreme cases 
which authorised extreme powers, he must say, that he conceived 
such powers as these were not to be lightly granted by any British 
Minister. He certainly should be convinced, before he agreed to a 
vote of censure upon any Government for not granting them, 
tljat, in the first place, there were grounds for supposing them M| 



364 WAR WITH CHINA. 

have been absolutely necessary ; and in the next, that their having 
been withheld was the cause of the unfortunate circumstances in 
which we were now placed with regard to China. He, however, 
felt satisfied, that whether their powers had been granted or with- 
held, those unfortunate circumstances would have taken place: 
nay more, he ventured to say, that if those powers hsd been 
granted we should now find ourselves involved in hostilities with 
China under circumstances of peculiar calamity and national dis- 
honour. With regard to the practicability of carrying the order, 
if it had been given, into effect, he must say, that it would have 
been impossible to put down the trade, except by the exertions of 
the Chinese themselves. The right hon. Baronet was far too expe- 
rienced a member of the Government to suppose that, to suppress 
a lucrative trade, it was only necessary to issue a written edict. In 
England we had a preventive service, which cost half a million 
of money, which employed 6,000 effective men, and upwards of 
fifty cruisers, and yet every one knew well that -every article which 
was reasonably portable, which was much desired, and on which 
severe duties were imposed, was smuggled to a very great extent. It 
was known that the amount of brandy smuggled had been ordinarily 
600,000 gallons every year, and of tobacco an amount not much less 
than the whole quantity regularly imported through the Custom- 
house, was conveyed into the country by clandestine means. It 
has been proved, also, before a Committee of the House that 
no less than 4,000,000lbs. of tobacco had been smuggled into Ire- 
land in opposition to the most effective preventive laws which 
existed in the world. Knowing: this — knowing that the whole 
power of King, Lords, and Commons could not put an end to a 
lucrative traffic ; could the House believe that a mere order could 
put a stop to the trade in opium ? Did they suppose that a traffic 
supported on the one hand by men actuated by the love of a drug, 
from the intoxicating qualities of which they found it impossible 
&> i't'Sti'ajn themselves ; and on the Ot}j£?', by persons actuated by 



• WAK WITH CHINA. 

the desire of gain, could be terminated by the publication of 2 
piece of paper signed "Charles Elliott." There never was a 
stronger proof of the impotence of Chinese power to keep out an 
article of traffic than that afforded by the year 1839. If the trade 
could have been stopped by them, it was impossible to suppose that 
Mr. Commissioner Lin would have caused the seizure of certain indi- 
viduals, against some of whom there existed mere suspicion, whilst 
against others there was no hesitation in supposing that there was 
not the slightest ground for believing them implicated in the traffic 
which had been carried on. Could it be supposed even that if the 
orders of Elliott had failed, the preventive service of China, had 
it been as effectual and as trustworthy as our own, would have 
been able to overcome the affection of the opium-eater for the drug 
upon which he feasted, or the longing of the merchant for the 
profit which he obtained ? If it could not be supposed to produce 
so good a result, he would ask whether it were to be considered 
that it would produce no effect at all ? He believed that it would, 
and that the effect would have been this — that it would have 
driven the opium trade from Canton ; but would have spread it 
throughout the coast of the whole country. The traffic would not 
have been carried on, indeed, any longer under the very eye of the 
commissioner, or in such a manner as that the traders might after- 
wards be called upon to answer for their offences in some English 
court, but they would remove from Canton, where an English 
society being collected, their proceedings would be watched with 
unremitting jealousy, but they would have found that the lawless 
trade would have been carried on all along the coast, by means 
infinitely more lawless than those which had been already adopted, 
The traders would have gone to a distance from the great port, 
the whole east coast would have been covered with smugglers, and 
in their efforts to secure the object which they had in view, they 
would have undoubtedly come in contact with the local authori- 
ties, who would be unaccustomed to deal with European traders ; 



366 WAR WITH CHINA. 

the mala prohibita of a contraband traffic would be converted intc 
the mala per se, and smuggling would be turned into piracy 
a crime of a much more heinous description. If under the eye of 
an English society — consisting certainly of persons, some of whom 
were suspected of being concerned in the trade, but many of whom 
were of the highest respectability — the traffic could not long be 
carried on without producing acts having some appearance of 
piracy, what could they expect when no man would have any 
iudce of his own conduct but himself? It would.be found that 
men being congregated in vessels for the purpose of carrying on 
the trade, would land for the purpose of procuring fresh supplies 
of provisions ; that their demands would be refused ; that they 
would attempt to seize them ; wells would be poisoned, or four or 
five sailors, perhaps, going to fill their water casks, would be cap- 
tured, and that the demand for their liberation not being complied 
with, their comrades would proceed to burn and sack the neigh- 
bouring village. Similar circumstances had occurred in former 
instances, and he saw no reason why, at the present time, scenes 
of equal atrocity should not occur. He believed, therefore, that 
if the smuggling trade had been removed from Macao, and scat- 
tered along the coast in the manner which he had described, hos- 
tilities with China would have been the speedy and the inevitable 
consequence. What did they see in the proceedings of the 
Chinese government, or of Mr. Commissioner Lin, to induce them 
to suppose that those hostilities would not have taken place? 
Commissioner Lin had not hesitated to inflict severe punishment 
upon men whose characters were totally unsuspected, and was it 
likely, that if the events which he had endeavoured to describe, 
had occurred along the coast of China, Lin would have been 
more scrupulous ? Would he not have published some procla- 
mation, setting forth, that Captain Elliott had undertaken to put 
a stop to the contraband trade, but that he had deceived him; 
that he had pretended to command the discontinuance of the 



War with rtttXA. 367 

traffic, but that he had issued false edfefs — for that it had been 

earned on along tlie whole coast, to an extent even greater than 
that to which it had before gone, and that therefore lie would 
hold all Englishmen, who ought to have had the power to prevent 
all this, whether blameable or not blameable, as hostages, until 
the wrong which had been committed should have been remedied. 
That would have been the spirit of Mr. Commissioner Lin ; and 
therefore he said that, so far as he had been able to form a judg- 
ment, he believed that the positive prohibition of the opium trade 
by Captain Elliott, unsupported by physical force, would have 
been inadequate to put the trade down. Did the right hon. 
Baronet mean, that this country should pay the expense of a 
preventive service for the whole coast of China? He knew that 
it was impossible that he, or any one else, could for one moment 
advocate a doctrine so absurd ; and he could not but repeat his 
rirm belief, that by any course but that which had been adopted, 
the existing evils would only have been ao-aravated, and the 
rupture which had taken place would have been brought about in 
a manner still more calamitous, and still more dreadful. lie had 
now gone, he thought, through the four charges on which the 
right hon. Baronet rested his case; and he declared most solemnly, 
that it did not appear to him that, according to the terms of the 
motion which was before the House, to any one of the four 
omissions which were alleged to have been made, was to be attri- 
buted that interruption of our friendly relations which was so 
deeply and so universally deplored. If he could believe that hon. 
Gentlemen would vote, keeping in mind really what the proposi- 
tion was, he should not have the smallest hesitation as to the 
result ; but he could not refrain from saying, that some persons, 
for whose feelings of humanity he entertained the highest respect, 
might possibly imagine, that in giving their assent to the motion, 
they were marking their disapprobation of the trade, which he 
regretted as deeply as they did. They had seen it asserted ovei 



368 WAR WITH CHINA. 

and over again, that the Government was advocating the cause of 
the contraband trade, in order to force an opium war on th< 
public ; but he thought that it was impossible to be conceived that 
a. thought so absurd and so atrocious should have ever entered the 
minds of the British Ministry. Their course was clear. They 
might dowbt whether it were wise for the government of China to 
exclude from that country a drug which, if judiciously adminis- 
tered, was powerful in assuaging pain, and in promoting health, 
because it was occasionally used to excess by intemperate men — 
they might doubt whether it was wise policy on the part of that 
Government to attempt to stop the efflux of precious metals from 
the country in the due course of trade. They learned from his- 
tory — and almost every country afforded proof, which was strength- 
ened by existing circumstances in England, to which he had already 
alluded — that no machinery, however powerful, had been sufficient 
to keep out of any country those luxuries which the people enjoyed, 
or were able to purchase, or to prevent the efflux of precious 
metals, when it was demanded by the course of trade. What 
Great Britain could not effect with the finest marine, and the most 
trustworthy preventive service in the world, was not likely to be 
effected by the feeble efforts of the mandarins of China. But, 
whatever their opinions on these points might be, the Governor of 
China alone, it must be remembered, was competent to decide ; 
that government had a right to keep out opium, to keep in silver, 
and to enforce their prohibitory laws, by whatever means which 
they might possess, consistently with the principles of public mora- 
lity, and of international law ; and if, after having given fait 
notice of their intention to seize all contraband goods introduced 
into their dominions, they seized our opium, we had no right to 
complain ; but when the government, finding, that by just and 
lawful means, they could not carry out their prohibition, resorted 
to measures unjust and unlawful, confined our innocent country- 
men, and insulted the Sovereign in the person of her represerLa- 



War with cuixa. 360 

tive, then lie fought, the time had arrived when it was fit that 
we should interfere. Whether the proceedings of the Chinese 
were or were not founded on humanity, was not now to be decided. 
Let them take the case of the most execrable crime that had ever 
been dignified bv the name of a trade — the African slave trade. 
The prosecution of that trade was made a misdemeanour, a felony, 
and finally piracy. We made treaties with foreign powers and paid 
large sums of money to secure the object which we had in view 
and yet it was perfectly notorious, that notwithstanding all the 
efforts which we had made, slaves had been introduced from Africa 
into our colony of the Mauritius. Undoubtedly it was our duty to 
put down the traffic which had so long been carried on with 
rigour, and to bring all persons engaged in it to punishment; but 
suppose a ship under French colours was seen skulking under the 
coast of the island, and that the Governor had his eye upon it 
and was satisfied that it was a slaver, and that it was waiting for 
an opportunity by night to run its cargo ; suppose the Governor 
not having a sufficient naval force to seize the vessel, should send 
and take thirty or forty French gentlemen resident in the island, 
some of them, perhaps, suspected of having been engaged in the 
trade, and some who had never fallen under any suspicion, and 
lock them up. Suppose amongst others, he had laid violent 
hands on the Consul of France, saying that they should have no 
food till they produced the proprietor of the vessel, would not the 
French government be in a condition to claim reparation, and, if 
so, would not the French government have a right to exact repa- 
ration if refused by arms ? Would it be enough for us to say, 
" Oh, but it is such a wicked trade, such a monstrous trade, that 
you have no right to quarrel with us for resorting to any means 
to put it down V The answer would be, " Are you not trampling 
upon a great principle by doing so ?" If such would be the answer 
of France, was it not fit and right that her Majesty should demand 

reparation from China ? Thev had seen the success of the first 

16* 



3?0 WAtl WITH CttIS + A. 

great act of injustice perpetrated by that government produce it* 
natural effect on a people ignorant of the relative places they and 
we held in the scale of nations. The Imperial Commissioner 
began by confiscating property ; his next demand was for innocent 
blood. A Chinese was slain ; the most careful inquiry had been 
made, but was insufficient to discover the slayer, or even the 
nation to which he belonged ; but it was caused to be notified that, 
guilty or not, some subject of the Queen's must be given up. 
Great Britain gave an unequivocal refusal to be a party to so bar- 
barous a proceeding. The people at Canton were seized ; they 
were driven from Macao, suspected or not. Women with child, 
children at the breast, were treated with equal severity, were 
refused bread, or the means of subsistence ; the innocent Lascars 
were thrown into the sea ; an English gentleman was barbarously 
mutilated, and England found itself at once assailed with a fury 
unknown to civilized countries. The place of this country among 
nations was not so mean or ill ascertained that we should trouble 
ourselves to resist every petty slight which we might receive. Con- 
scious of her power, England could bear that her Sovereign should 
be called a barbarian, and her people described as savages, desti- 
tute of everv useful art. When our Ambassadors were obliged to 
undergo a degrading prostration, in compliance with their regula- 
tions, conscious of our strength, we were more amused than irri- 
tated. But there was a limit to that forbearance. It would not 
have been worthy of us to take arms upon a small provocation, 
referring to rites and ceremonies merely ; but every one in the scale 
of civilized nations should know that Englishmen were ever living 
under the protecting eye of their own country. He was much 
touched, and he thought that probably many others were so also 
by one passage contained in the dispatch of Captain Elliott, in 
which he communicated his arrival at the factory at Canton. 
The moment at which he landed he was surrounded by his coun 
toymen in an agony of despair at their situation, but the first step 



WAR WITH CHINA. 371 

which lie took was to order the flag of Great Britain to be taken 
from the boat and to be planted in the balcony. This was an act 
which revived the drooping hopes of those who looked to him for 
protection. It was natural that they should look with confidence 
on the victorious flag which was hoisted over them, which reminded 
them that they belonged to a country unaccustomed to defeat, to 
submission, or to shame — it reminded them that they belonged to 
a country which had made the farthest ends of the earth ring 
with the fame of her exploits in redressing the wrongs of her chil- 
dren ; that made the Dey of Algiers humble himself to the insulted 
consul ; that revenged the horrors of the black hole on the fields 
of Plessey ; that had not degenerated since her great Protector 
vowed that lie would make the name of Englishman as respected 
as ever had been the name of Roman citizen. They felt that 
although far from their native country, and then in danger in a 
part of the world remote from that to which they must look for 
protection, yet that they belonged to a state which won Id not 
suffer a hair of one of its members to be harmed with impunity. 
All were agreed upon this point of the question. He had listened 
with painful attention to the speech of the right hon. Baronet, but 
he had not detected in it one word which implied that he was not 
disposed to insist on a just reparation for the offence which had 
been committed against us. With respect to the present motion, 
whatever its result might be, he could not believe that the House 
would agree to a vote of censure so gross, so palpable, or so unjust 
as that which was conveyed in its terms; and he trusted that even 
if there was to be a change of men consequential upon the conclu- 
sion of the debate, there would at all events be no change of mea- 
sures. He had endeavoured to express his views and his opinions 
upon this subject, and he begged in conclusion to declare his earnest 
desire that this most rightful quarrel might be prosecuted to a 
triumphal close — that the brave men to whom was entrusted the 
♦ask of demauding that reparation which the circumstances of the 



372 tt'AR WITH CHINA. 

case required, might fulfil their duties with moderation, bit with 
success — that the name, not only of English valour, but of English 
mercy, might be established ; and that the overseeing care of that 
gracious Providence which had so often brought good out of evil, 
might make the crime which had forced us to take those measures 
which had been adopted the means of promoting an everlasting 
peace, alike beneficial to England and to China. 



373 



COLONIAL PASSENGERS? BILL.* 

june 4, 1840. 

He entertained so high a respect for his right hon. and learned 
friend [Sir S. Lushington], and knew so well the services he had 
rendered to the cause of freedom, that he felt much pain in differ- 
ing from him. But after the speech they had just heard, he was 
unwilling to give his vote without stating the grounds of it. He 
believed, that with respect to the general principle there was little 
difference between his right hon. friend and himself. None knew 
better than his right hon. friend how important it was to remove 
labourers from districts where the population was thick and wages 
were low, to districts where the land was widely spread, and labour in 
demand, lie would admit, there might be exceptions — he thought, 
that wheresoever slavery existed there ought to be restrictions 
placed upon immigration ; he was also of opinion, that while 
slavery existed in the West Indies, it was in the highest degree 
pernicious to the labouring population to permit the emigration 
from parts where the demand for labour was small to those where 
it was great. And he considered, that the system of slavery, 
separating, as it did altogether, the interest of the capitalist from 
that of the labourer, depriving the latter of the fair advantage, 
which in a free condition he had a right to expect from the fertile 
soil, and a great demand for his labour, rendered it necessary to 
impose a restriction upon the passage of the labourer from one 
country to another. But now, if there was any one part of the 
empire from which it was desirable to encourage emigration, it was 

* Hansard. 3d Series, vol. liv. p. 941 -9-14. 



374 COLONIAL PASSENGERS BILL. 

India, and if there was any part to which the tide should flow, »♦ 
was the Mauritius. The wages in the latter place would be fift? 
times what the labourer received in his native place. When he 
considered the state of the native peasantry of India, he would 
say, with every respect for the sincere feelings of humanity which 
actuated those who were opposed to the present measure, that 
they might be betrayed by those very feelings into committing 
a great wrong upon that unfortunate population. He could 
state it as a fact, that at the time when the debates on the subject 
of these peasants were going on — while persons were speaking 
with the greatest horror of the new system of slave-trade, the 
Governor-general was obliged to turn out of his road to avoid the 
s : ght of these wretched peasants dying in the ditches from starva- 
tion, in consequence of low wages. He understood his right hon. 
friend to say, that as a general principle, they ought not to inter- 
fere with the free labourers removing from one part of the country 
to another, therefore it would appear as if he contended, that in 
the present case, there were circumstances which counterbalanced 
the difference between famine and plenty, and between two-pence 
a day as wages and one shilling. His right hon. friend had spoken 
of the disparity between the sexes. Had he heard the statement 
of his noble friend, he would have heard that measures were in 
view which would remedy that great evil. His right hon. friend 
had also spoken of the artifices, blameable in the highest degree, 
practised by the agents in the Mauritius ; but had he heard the 
speech of his noble friend, he would have discovered that no 
agency would now be permitted, except such as was authorized by 
the government in India or the government in the Mauritius. 
Had his right hon. friend heard the speech, he would also have 
discovered that it was intended to limit the contracts entered into 
to such a degree that the labourers would be at liberty to choose 
their masters, and that no contract was to last for a longer term 
than twelve months. That was a state of things under which 



COLONIAL PASSENGERS MLL. .37') 

evils would arise, such as those anticipated by his rigM hon. friend. 
With regard to the point that the language of these people was 
not understood in the Mauritius, his right hon. friend seemed to 
have ovei\< oked the fact, that in that island were constantly to be 
found a considerable number of the civil servants of the East 
India Company, men of high respectability, character, and attain- 
ments. Those persons understood the language of the emigrants, 
and would naturally be disposed to feel a strong interest in their 
welfare. That circumstance alone would constitute a strong dis 
tinction between the case of the Mauritius and of the West Indies, 
which his right hon. friend had paralleled. With respect to some 
unfortunate circumstances in the past history of the Mauritius he 
would say, without attempting to impute to his right hon. friend 
any other motives than those by which he was guided, and which 
were the purest and most humane, that both his right hon. friend, 
and the hon. Member for Bridport, had insisted too much upon 
that point. It was worth while to consider whether the last 
slave trade, so long carried on in the Mauritius, were to be attn 
buted entirely to a lawless disposition and contempt for the mother 
country, or whether it were not to be attributed to the fact that 
the Mauritius was close to the slave market, while other colonies 
were more distant. There were manv o-eneral local circumstances 
to induce the belief that the emigrants would be better off in the 
Mauritius, and return to their own country afterwards under better 
circumstances from the Mauritius than from the West Indies. Ho 
would say, then, looking at the papers, if he were asked whether 
the evils he saw there were those of the slave trade such as existed 
between Africa and the West Indies, or those of the slave trade as 
it existed between this country and the colonies on the other side 
of the Atlantic, he should say that the evils, though great and requir- 
ing correction, certainly belonged to the latter class. He would 
only add that he believed no persons — or few at least — had felt 
more strongly than he had felt during the contest that took place 



37 .GOiXStAt PASSENGERS' lilLL. 

on the subject of negro slavery. He would not say that lie did 
not feel for those persons who were connected with colonial pro- 
perty ; and lie declared that since that time, so far from regard- 
ing those proprietors with unfriendly feelings, there was no interest 
in the empire which he was more desirous to see in a flourish 
ing and prosperous condition, because he believed that on the 
fate of the great experiment that had been tried depended the 
fate of slaves throughout the civilized world. If, twenty years 
hence, those colonies in which slavery continued, should be able 
to point to those in which it had been abolished, ruined, and the 
plantations in them abandoned, then he would say that although 
we should indeed have wiped a stain from our own land, he ques- 
tioned whether we should have conferred a great and signal boon 
upon humanity in general. Believing, then, that the measure of 
his noble friend would have a tendency to promote the prosperity 
of the colonies by means at once just towards the labourer, and 
compatible with his freedom and comfort, he should give it hi« 
most cordial support. 



377 



REGISTRATION OF VOTERS— IRELAND.* 

june 19, 1840. 

He entertained so great a respect for the eminent talents and lecral 
aeuteness of the right lion. Gentleman who had just sat down 
[Sir E. Sugden], that it was with great diffidence he ventured 
to oppose his opinion to that of the right hon. and learned 
Gentleman on the construction of a single clause. But when the 
right hon. and learned Gentleman had emphatically, distinctly, and 
repeatedly assured the Committee that the question on which they 
were to divide was, whether a person now on the register was tc 
remain on it all his life, he (Mr. Macaulay) could not but say that 
it appeared to him that the words of his noble Friend's amend- 
ment by no means bore out such a statement. Ilis reading of tne 
words was, that the voter should be continued on the register so 
long as his right of voting and the registry were to remain in 
force, which under the present law were not for the term of his 
life, but for the period of eight years. If he was correct in con- 
ceiving that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had thus, from 
reading it but cursorily, mistaken his noble Friend's amendment, 
he might well suppose that the right hon. and learned Gentleman 
had not been altogether correct in his other remarks. He utterly 
denied, that the smallest imputation of unfairness, of violation of 
Parliamentary rule, or of want of perfect candour, could be 
brought against his noble Friend. The question which his noble 
Friend had brought forward was one of the gravest importance ; 
it was the question of re-investigation or no re-investigation, and 

* JJansard, 3d Series, vol, liv. r: 349-} 35f, 



378 REGISTRATION OF VOTERS IRELAND. 

was one which the Committee would repeatedly have to decide on 
during the progress of the bill. It was a question which it was 
possible for any Member of that House, without the slightest 
infringement of Parliamentary rule, to bring forward on the dis- 
cussion of any clause in which it could with propriety be inserted. 
Considering the history of the noble Lord's bill — considering that on 
the question of going into Committee the noble Lord had a majority 
of but three, and that of that majority two hon. Members declared 
themselves unfavourable to the principle of re-investigation, two 
used language such as gave the House to understand that should 
the bill come to a third reading, still containing that principle, they 
would vote against it — he thought his noble Friend was justified 
on the first occasion which presented itself in taking the opinion 
of the Committee on the great question of whether re-investigation 
was to remain the prominent defect of the bill ? Although it was 
the intention of Government to go fully and fairly into the Com- 
mittee on the bill, he entertained no expectation of any good 
result. He did not hope that any good measure could be made 
out of one so laboriously, so elaborately, bad as that of the noble 
Lord ; but if any effectual alteration could be made, it must be 
made by a series of amendments like the present. By such altera- 
tions the bill might, perhaps, leave the Committee what it purported 
to be, a bill to amend the Registration. At present he could 
designate it by no other name than a bill to take away the right 
of voting under the pretence of ascertaining it. He need hardly 
sav, that it was to no purpose that the bill did not directly affect 
the right of voting, because there was no right which could not be 
annulled by indirect as well as by direct means, or by providing a 
tedious, troublesome, and costly mode of obtaining it. 7 hat was 
seen in all questions relating to the rights of property. It was to 
no purpose, by the substantive law of the land, particular estates 
or sums of money belonged to a certain person, if that law were 
fp expensive as only to obtain his right at a greater expense tbftp 



ttfi&isTfUflOtf OF VOTERS fRELAfcfi. 87i? 

the object was worth. There was not an hon. Member in thai 
House who had not at some time or other submitted to an unjust 
demand rather than run the risk of vexatious proceedings'. If* a 
law were brought into that House for the purpose of making jus- 
tice expensive, lie should be justified in calling it a law of spoliation, 
and so he thought he was justified in designating a bill the object 
of which was disfranchisement under the name of registration. 
At the same time he had not the smallest doubt but that the bill 
of the noble Lord would remove some persons from the register 
who had not the smallest right to be there, in the same way as if 
they made a law making the Court of Requests as expensive as 
the House of Lords. Many a groundless action would be driven 
out of it, but the question was, whether they would not be throw- 
ing difficulties in the way of the just as well as of the unjust 
claimant. Let. the noble Lord satisfy him that the impediments 
provided by this bill would lie only in the way of fraudulent 
claimants, and he would give him his support. But he saw no 
provision to that effect in the bill. He saw that it went to make 
registration costly and difficult both for the fraudulent and the 
just claimant, and it was on the distinction betw r een the two that 
the sense of the Committee would be taken. It provided repeated 
hearings of the same question — first before a subordinate, and then 
before an appellate tribunal. Pie would beg of the committee 
t'» consider to what extent that abuse mio-ht be carried under the 
bill. Even the legal knowledge of the right hon. and learned 
Gentleman would not enable him to find a parallel in any law, 
British or foreign, ancient or modern. It would not be necessarv 
to select as matter of objection some point which had not been 
investigated before, for one and the same objection might be raised 
every time a new assistant barrister came to the country, or as 
often as a new judge went the circuit. If he rightly understood 
the noble Lord's bill, an objection might be made in 1840 before 
the assistant barrister, from that there might be made an appeal to 



ggO JtEGiSTRAtiott OF VOTERS IRELAND. 

the Court of Queen's Bench ; in 1841 it might be again brought 
before the assistant-barrister, and from him to the Court of Com- 
mon Pleas ; in 1842 it might again come before the assistant- 
barrister, and then there was an appeal to the Court of Exchequer. 
Nay, further, should there be a new Chief Justice, it might be tried 
another year in the Court of Common Pleas. Now, he would 
venture to ask if the whole jurisprudence of the world contained 
anything which afforded a parallel to such a system of legislation ? 
He would venture to assert that there was no parallel, because, 
although there was something like it in the English system — 
and it was the vice of the system — yet there was only one trial, but 
in any other respect he defied the noble Lord to find a parallel in 
any country that ever called itself civilized. The noble Lord said, if 
that power of objection was not given, persons would get upon the 
registry who had no legal right to be there. Did the noble Lord 
imagine that there were no persons in possession of property in 
this country the judgments in whose favour were by no means 
justified ? Did the noble Lord imagine that all the damages 
awarded to plaintiffs by juries, and that all the large sums which 
had been paid by the Courts of Law, were sanctioned by truth 
and justice ? Did he not believe that there were many estates 
which were in the possession of wrong owners ? But the Courts 
of Law could not and ought not to set these matters right by 
eternal re-investigation. Suppose an injured man had come and 
said that the judgment obtained against him was erroneous — that 
he had procured the evidence — that he had found in the bottom 
of a chest an old paper which would establish his claim — that he 
had been taken by surprise ; the court might naturally say, that 
they regretted the hardship of the case, but it would be impossible 
for them to go on hearing and re-hearing the case twenty or thirty 
or fifty times ; that the noble Lord's bill admitted, and it required 
no great stretch of imagination to suppose a case in which the 
voter might bf> objected to 120 or 1-30 times in the course of Uw 



REGISTRATION OF VOTERS IRfcLANl). SSI 

life. He had not the smallest doubt that if they went on hearing 
criminal cases over and over again, they would at length hang 
some great ruffians. He had no doubt that if a man brought an 
action over again for the same cause, some cases of importance 
might be set right ; but it had been ruled over and over again 
that it was better occasionally that some wrong should be endured 
than that the rights of society should be constantly interfered with ; 
and why should they depart from that principle in the single case 
of the franchise ? No doubt the bill would exclude many dis- 
honest voters, but the question was, what would be its effect on 
the honest voter ? All the objections in the bill were common to 
the rightful and the wrongful claimant. The vexation and expense 
of travelling, of appearing before the judge, of severe cross- 
examinations, of brow -beatings, and reflections upon his integrity, 
were all common to the rightful as well as the wrongful claimant. 
But did the noble Lord believe that a case never broke down unless 
when a man went with a fraudulent intention ? Did he not know 
that the accidental absence of a witness, or direct perjury — (for 
if the noble Lord imputed so much on the side of the claimant, 
surely he might allow a little on the side of the objectors) — would 
break down the claim ? Was he not aware that men, who thought 
they had a good right, were frequently withheld from pressing it 
in a court of law, because they were in doubt whether they could 
establish it satisfactorily ; or had the noble Lord never heard of 
the uncertainty of the law ? If out of one hundred honest 
claimants only four or five were defeated, or saddled with costs, 
could any one doubt that that would act to the injury of the 
honest claimant ? Almost every clause of the noble Lord's bill 
for keeping out the wrongful, acted just as effectually against the 
rightful claimant. The noble Lord had drawn a pretty picture of 
an unfortunate claimant being opposed by a pauper ; but the 
noble Lord should recollect that property was the best of qualifi- 
cations — that the claim of the rich man must be a valid one, and 



382 registration of voters — Ireland 

that it was much more likely that the case might be reversed 
He would suppose another case, the case of a man of great wealtli, 
and of imperious, obstinate, and arbitrary temper — one of those 
men, who, as had been said by his lamented and valued friend, in 
words which should be engraven on his tomb, thought much of 
the rights of property, and little of its duties. lie would suppose 
that man willing to spend £6,000 or £7,000 a year in securing the 
command of a county ; that, every man knew, would not be 
impossible even in England. He would not mention any recent 
transaction; he did not wish to mix up personalities with that 
serious debate ; but they all knew that a certain man now dead, 
provoked by the opposition he received in a certain town, vowed 
that he would make the grass grow in its streets, and he kept his 
vow. Another ejected 400 voters in one county, and entered 15 
criminal and 225 civil actions. Such a man could easily command 
an Irish county. It would only be a picture less in his gallery, or 
an antique gem the less in his collection. The cost would be but 
as dust under his feet, compared with the pleasure of dominatioi 
He had no hesitation in saying that every clause in the noble 
Lord's bill tended to harass and obstruct the voter in obtaining his 
just rights. The effect, in short, would be, that a great many 
would abandon the claim altogether. The franchise was a sacred 
public trust, which should be used for the benefit of the public, 
and yet when honestly seeking that, their pecuniary interests were 
to be seriously affected. They should also take into consideration 
that men did not go to the registry with the same spirit with 
which they went to the poll. There had been few registrations 
since 1826, at which a general election was expected ; and men 
who, when the candidates were declared, and when perhaps the fate 
of a ministry was to be sealed, would pay £50 or run any trouble 
to record their votes in a hard-fought election, would hardly go 
across the street to register. Therefore, you ought rather to 
encourage than discourage registration. Yet, supposing a Parlia 



REGISTRATION OF VOTERS — IRELAND. 38d 

ment to last seven years, the noble Lord's bill would expose the 
,? oter to fourteen law-suits, against which what human fortitude or 
human patriotism could stand out ? — and this was the principle 
which the House was now called upon to assert or reject. Sir, 
(continued the right hon. Gentleman), there is another considera- 
tion which applies specially to Ireland ; that is, the state of the 
franchise. It is impossible to separate that from the subject of 
registration — it is impossible to have a perfect law of registration, 
that is, one which shall throw the greatest difficulties in the way 
of the wrongful, and every facility in the way of the rightful 
claimant : but it is still open for you to distinguish as clearly as 
possible which are the rightful and which are the wrongful claim- 
ants, and how can I decide upon a question like this without look- 
ing at the state of the franchise ? It is impossible not to feel how 
much more the Irish franchise is restricted, as compared with the 
English, even by the Reform Bill — how much it is restricted even 
below what Pitt, and Castlereagh, and Grenville, and Windham, 
considered to be just. Looking at statistics, I find that Westmore- 
land, with little more than 50,000 inhabitants, and covered by 
naked hills and barren moors, has more voters than any Irish 
county — than Tipperary with 400,000 inhabitants, or Cork with 
800,000. Sir, I cannot think that even the superiority of England 
in point of property can explain so enormous a disparity ; and, 
whatever way I look at the question, I think that the Irish franchise 
ouirht to be rather extended than restricted — if it is to be altered 
at all — and I do not pledge myself to support any proposition for 
its extension ; but if I hesitate to interpose to make it better, I 
will not lay violent hands upon it to make it >voi e — and strong 
as is my regard for the great settlement of 1832, I will never 
consent to make it final as against the people alone ; and if 
not restoring what it took away, I will not consent to withdraw the 
pmallest portion of what it gave. But, Sir, this is not an Irish 
merely, it is an imperial Question. I hope and trust tL*t if the 



384 REGISTRATION OF VOTERS — IRELANT 

bill is to pass at all, it will pass modified by the amendment pro- 
posed to-night, and by others conceived in the same spirit. But 
if not, I shall regard it as the first step in a great retrograde move- 
ment — as the beginning of a scheme of which the object is to 
undo what was done by the Reform Bill. I do not believe the 
Reform Bill would be directly attacked. Much as hon. Gentle- 
men have talked of re-action, they well know that there has been 
no re-action here — they well know that it would not be safe to 
attempt to despoil our great cities and towns of political power, and 
confer it again n old walls and mouldering towers. But what 
cannot be done directly may be done indirectly — it matters not 
what franchise is conferred if the means of acquiring it are 
restricted. It matters not how well the law of rights is framed, if not 
accompanied by as efficient a law of remedies — power that can be 
obtained only by wealth or time, though nominally given to the 
many, is really given only to the few. Let us have the most demo- 
cratic Reform Bill, and let the noble Lord frame our registration, 
and political power may yet be in the hands of the aristocracy and 
its tools. The Opposition begin with Ireland, and they are wise. 
Distance, difference cf religious belief — perhaps that unfriendly 
feeling, the natural effect of much wrong inflicted, and much 
wrong endured — may have deterred the people of this country from 
resenting the insult offered to the Irish nation as they would have 
resented the same insult to themselves. But, Sir, I grieve for the 
short-sightedness of my countrymen ; Ireland is the first field — it 
will not be the last. I believe this struggle is just as much for 
Yorkshire and Kent as for Cork and Kerry. And the day when 
the constituencies, worked upon this bill, shall send up to this 
House representatives regarded by the Irish people as enemies, will 
be dark and dreary for the liberties of England. But it is not 
necessary that I should resort to topics like these. The derisive- 
expressions of Gentlemen opposite, I suppose intimate, that they 
WQujd be unjust to Ireland alone. Well, whether they ins.io 



REGISTRATION OF VOTERS IRELAND. ,385 

injustice to be confined to Ireland or to extend to England, I 
hardly know how to express my reprobation of so odious and dis- 
gusting a measure. The people of Ireland have been already 
hardly enough used. When we granted them religious emancipa- 
tion, we took away their franchise. By the Reform Bill, a very 
small portion of what was before taken away was restored ; and 
now the noble Lord by this bill would take away the little which 
the Reform Bill bestowed. There is only one bill on the table 
relative to the registration in England, a bill laid on the table by 
the same hand that laid the Reform Bill there, and one worthy of 
that hand. But as regards Ireland, we are now discussing a bill 
made up of the very worst features of all the bills that have been 
o( late years introduced on the subject of registration — of the 
English system, of the system at present existing in Ireland, 
and of the ill-considered plan of Sir Michael O'Loghlen. Yes! 
the ill-considered plan of Sir Michael O'Loghlen. Each and all 
of these systems have been made to contribute their evil, but not 
one of their redeeming qualities ; and the noble Lord, out of those 
evil qualities, has framed his bill. What must be the feelings of 
the people of Ireland when they compare that bill with the bill 
laid on the table by my noble Friend for the settlement o f the 
registration system in England ? To perpetuate differences and to 
excite discord seems to be the object of the noble Lord. Not 
such was the spirit in which the great minister who carried the 
net of Union treated the people of Ireland. The words which he 
quoted seem to have been forgotten by the noble Lord. 

'* Paribus se legibue ambse 
Invictae gentcs aeterna in foedera ruittanL* 

These were the sentiments of the promoter of the act of 

Union. I venerate that great measure. I am ready to defend it 

against the open enmity of the hon. and learned inemV" AiI 

Dublin, as against the still more dangerous frienJahtp of the nc^ e. 

VOI.. I. 17 



386 REGISTRATION OF VOTERS IRELAND. 

Lord; I am satisfied that for every repealer made by the 
eloquence of the hon. and learned Member for Dublin, ten 
would be produced by the bill of the noble Lord if it passed in its 
present shape, and unmitigated. Should an universal cry for 
repeal of the Union arise in Ireland on the passing of the bill, I 
should not regard it in anv other light than as the natural succession 
of effect and cause. It would be puerile, nay it would be hypo- 
critical, to go on misgoverning, and to pretend to hope that the 
results of good government would follow — to assume that those 
whom we treat as aliens, ought to feel towards us as brothers— to 
appose agitation and multiply the grievances by which agitation 
is alone supported, and by which it was originated — to raise the 
cry of civil war whereon the people of Ireland called for a repeal 
of the legislative Union, and at the very time when you are tak- 
ing steps to annul all those rights and privileges, without which 
the legislative Union would be but an empty name. 



38 



m 



THE COPYRIGHT BILL.* 

FEBRUARY 5, 1841. 

Though, Sir, it is in some sense agreeable tc approach a subjec 
with winch political animosities have nothing to do, I offer myself 
to your notice with some reluctance. It is painful to me to take a 
course which may possibly be misunderstood or misrepresented as 
unfriendly to the interests of literature and literary men. It is 
painful to me, I will add, to oppose my hon. and learned Friend 
on a question which he has taken up from the purest motives, and 
which he regards with a parental interest. These feelings have, 
hitherto kept me silent when the law of copyright has been under 
discussion. But as I am, on full consideration, satisfied that the 
measure before us will, if adopted, inflict grievous injury on the 
public, without conferring any compensating advantage on men of 
letters, I think it my duty to avow that opinion and to defend it. 
The first thing to be done, Sir, is to settle on what principles the 
question is to be argued. Are we free to legislate for the public 
good, or are we not? Is this a question of expediency, or is it a 
question of light ? Many of those who have written and petitioned 
against the existing state of things, treat the question as one of 
right. The law of nature, according to them, gives to every man 
a sacred and indefeasible property in his own ideas, in the fruits 
of his own reason and imagination. The legislature has indeed 
the power to take away this property, just as it has the power to 
pass an act of attainder for cutting off an innocent man's head 
without a trial. But as such an act of attainder would be legal 

* Hansard, 3<1 Series, vol. Ivi. p. 344-357. 



388 COPYRIGHT Bill. 

murder, so would an act invading the right of an author to his 
copy be, according to these gentlemen, legal robbery. Now, Sir, 
if this be so, let justice be done, cost what it may. I am not 
prepared, like my hon. and learned Friend, to agree to a compro- 
mise between right and expediency, to commit an injustice for the 
public convenience. But I must say, that his theory soars far 
beyond the reach of my faculties. It is not necessary to go. on 
the present occasion, into a metaphysical inquiry about the origin 
of the right of property ; and certainly nothing but the strongest 
necessity would lead me to discuss a subject so likely to be dis- 
tasteful to the House. I agree, I own, with Paley in thinking that 
property is the creature of the law, and that the law which creates 
property can be defended only on this ground, that it is a law 
beneficial to mankind. But it is unnecessary to debate that point. 
For even if I believed in a natural right of property, independen* 
"of utility and anterior to legislation, I should still deny that thk 
right could survive the original proprietor. Few, I apprehend, 
even of those who have studied in the most mystical and senti- 
mental schools of moral philosophy, will be disposed to maintain 
that there is a natural law of succession older and of higher 
authority than any human code. If there be, it is quite certain 
that we have abuses to reform much more serious than any con- 
nected with the question of copyright. For this natural law can 
be only one, and the modes of succession in the Queen's dominions 
are twenty. To go no further than England, land generally 
descends to the eldest son. In Kent the sons share and share 
alike ; in many districts the youngest takes the whole. Formerly 
a portion of a man's personal property was secured to his family. 
It was only of the residue that he could dispose by will. Now he 
can dispose of the whole by will. But a few years ago you 
enacted, that the will should not be valid unless there were twc 
witnesses. If a man dies intestate, his personal property generally 
goes according to the statute of distributions. But there are local 



COPYRIGHT B1LU 389 

customs which modify that statute. Now which of all these systems 
is conformed to the eternal standard of right ? Is it primogeni- 
ture, or gavelkind, or borough English? Are wills jure divino? 
Are the two witnesses jure divino ? Might not the pars rationa- 
bilis of our old law have as fair a claim to be regarded as of celes- 
tial institution ? Was the statute of distributions enacted in Heaven 
long before it was adopted by Parliament ? Or is it to Custom of 
York, or to Custom of London, that this pre-eminence belongs \ 
Surely, Sir, even those who hold that there is a natural right of 
property must admit that rules prescribing the manner in which 
the effects of deceased persons shall be distributed, are purely 
arbitrary, and originate altogether in the will of the legislature. 
If so, Sir, there is no controversy between my hon. and learned 
Friend and myself as to the principles on which this question is to 
be argued. For the existing law gives an author copyright during 
his natural life ; nor do I propose to invade that privilege, which 
I should, on the contrary, be prepared to defend strenuously against 
any assailant. The point in issue is, how long after an author's 
death the State shall recognise a copyright in his representatives 
and assigns, and it can, I think, hardly be disputed by any rational 
man that this is a point which the legislature is free to determine 
in the way which may appear to be most conducive to the general 
good. We may now, therefore, I think descend from these high 
regions, where we are in danger of being lost in the clouds, to 
firm ground and clear light. Let us look at this question like 
legislators, and after fairly balancing conveniences and inconve- 
niences, pronounce between the existing law of copyright and the 
law now proposed to us. The question of copyright, Sir, like 
most questions of civil prudence, is neither black nor white, but 
grey. The system of copyright has great advantages, and great 
disadvantages, and it is our business to ascertain what these are : 
and then to make an arranoement undei which the advantages 
may be as far as possible secured, and the disadvantages as far as 



§90 COPYRIGHT BILL. 

possil le excluded. The charge which I bring against my hon. and 
learned Friend's bill is this, — that it leaves the advantages nearly 
what they are at present, and increases the disadvantages at least 
four fold. The advantages arising from a system of copyright are 
obvious. It is desirable that we should have a supply of good 
books; we cannot have such a supply unless men of letters are 
liberally remunerated : and the least objectionable way of remune- 
rating them is by means of copyright. You cannot depend for 
literary instruction and amusement on the leisure of men occupied 
in the pursuits of active life. Such men may occasionally produce 
pieces of great merit. But you must not look to them for works 
which require deep meditation and long research. Such works 
you can expect only from persons who make literature the business 
of their lives. Of these persons few will be found among the rich 
and the noble. The rich and the noble are not impelled to intel- 
lectual exertion by necessity. They may be impelled to intellectual 
exertion by the desire of distinguishing themselves, or by the 
desire of benefiting the community. But it is generally within 
these walls that they seek to signalize themselves and to serve 
their fellow creatures. Both their ambition and their public spirit, 
in a country like this, naturally take a political turn. It is then on 
men whose profession is literature, and whose private means are 
not ample, that you must rely for a supply of valuable books. 
Such men must be remunerated for their literary labour. And 
there are only two ways in which they can be remunerated. One 
of those ways is patronage ; the other is copyright. There have 
been times in which men of letters looked, not to the public, but to 
the Government, or to a few great men, for the reward of their 
exertions. It was thus in the time of Mrecenas and PoCio at 
Rome, of the Medici at Florence, of Louis the Fourteenth in France, 
of Lord Halifax and Lord Oxford in this country. Now, Sir, I 
well know that there are cases in which it is fit and graceful, nay, 
in which it is a sacred duty, to reward the merits or to relieve the 



COPYRIGHT BILL. 391 

distref ses of men of genius by the exercise of this species of libe- 
rality. But these cases are exceptions. I can conceive no system 
more fatal to the integrity and independence of literary men, than 
one under which they should be taught to look for their daily 
bread to the favour of ministers and nobles. I can conceive no 
system more certain to turn those minds which are formed by 
nature to be the blessings and ornaments of our species into its 
scandal and its pest. We have then only one resource left. Wc 
must betake ourselves to copyright, be the inconveniences of copy- 
right what they may. Those inconveniences, in truth, are neither 
few nor small. Copyright is monopoly, and produces all the 
effects which the general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly. 
My lion, and learned Friend talks very contemptuously of those 
who are led away by the theory that monopoly makes things dear. 
That monopoly makes things dear is certainly a theory, as all the 
great truths which have been established by the experience of al 1 
ages and nations, and which are /taken for granted in all reasonings, 
may be said to be theories. It is a theory in the same sense in 
which it is a theory that day and night follow each other, that 
lead is heavier than water, that bread nourishes, that arsenic 
poisons, that alcohol intoxicates. If, as my lion, and learned 
Friend seems to hold, the whole world is in the wrono- on this 
poin'., if the real effect of monopoly is to make articles good 
and cheap, why does he stop short in his career of change? 
Why does he limit the operation of so salutary a principle to sixty 
years? Why does he consent to anything short of a perpetuity? 
He told us that in consenting to anything short of a perpetuity 
he was making a compromise between extreme right and expe- 
diency. But if his opinion about monopoly be correct, extreme 
right and expediency would coincide. Or rather why should we 
not restore the monopoly of the East-India trade to the East-India 
Company ? Why should we not revive all those old monopolies 
which, in Elizabeth's reign, galled our fathers so severely that, 



392 COPYRIGHT 3ILL. 

maddened by intolerable wrong, they opposed to their sovereign a 
resistance before which her haughty spirit quailed for the first an<i 
for the last time ? Was it the cheapness and excellence of com- 
modities that then so violently stirred the indignation of the 
English people ? I believe, Sir, that I may safely take it for 
granted that the effect of monopoly generally is to make articles 
scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad. And I may 
with equal safety challenge my hon. Friend to find out any 
distinction between copyright and other privileges of the same 
kind, — any reason why a monopoly of books should produce an 
effect directly the reverse of that which was produced by the East- 
India Company's monopoly of tea, or by Lord Essex's monopoly 
of sweet wines. Thus, then, stands the case. It is good, that 
authors should be remunerated ; and the least exceptionable way 
of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. 
For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil ; but the 
evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose 
of securing the good. Now, I will not affirm, that the existing 
law is perfect, that it exactly hits the point at which the monopoly 
ought to cease, but this I confidently say, that it is very much 
nearer that point than the law proposed by my hon. and learned 
Friend. For consider this ; the evil effects of the monopoly are 
proportioned to the length of its duration. But the good effects 
for the sake of which we bear with the evil effects are by no means 
proportioned to the length of its duration. A monopoly of sixty 
years produces twice as much evil as a monopoly of thirty years, 
and thrice as much evil as a monopoly of twenty years. But it is 
hy no means the fact that a posthumous monopoly of sixty years, 
gives to an author thrice as much pleasure and thrice as strong a 
motive as a posthumous monopoly of twenty years. On the con- 
trary, the difference is so small as to be hardly perceptible. We 
all know how faintly we are affected by the prospect of very 
4istant advantages, even when they are advantages which we may 



corruiGHT mLL. 393 

reasonably hope that we shall ourselves ej.vj.py. But an advantage 
that is to be enjoyed more than half a century after we are dead, 
by somebody, we know not whom, perhaps by somebody unborn, 
by somebody utterly unconnected with us. is really no motive to 
action. It is very probable, that in the course of some generations, 
land in the unexplored and unmapped heart of the Australian 
continent, will be very valuable. But there is none of us who 
would lay down five pounds for a whole province in the heart of 
the Australian continent. We know, that neither we, nor anybody 
for whom we care, will ever receive a farthing of rent from such a 
province. And a man is very little moved by the thought that in 
the year 2000 or 2100, somebody who claims through him, will 
employ more shepherds than Prince Esterhazy, and will have tho 
finest house and gallery of pictures at Victoria or Sydney. Now, 
this is the sort of boon which my hon. and learned Friend holds 
out to authors. Considered as a boon to them, it is a mere 
nullity ; but, considered as an impost on the public, it is no nullity, 
but a very serious and fatal reality ; I will take an example. Dr. 
Johnson died fifty-six years ago. If the law were what my hon. 
and learned Friend wishes to make it, somebody would now have 
the monopoly of Dr. Johnson's works. Who that somebody 
would be, it is impossible to say, but we may venture to guess. I 
guess, then, that it would have been some bookseller, who was the 
assign of another bookseller, who was the Grandson of a third 
bookseller, who had bought the copyright from Black Frank, the 
Doctor's servant, in l5f.8S or 1780. Now, would the knowledge, 
that this copyright would exist in 1841, have been a source of 
gratification to Johnson ? Would it have stimulated his exertions ? 
Would it have once drawn him out of his bed before noon ? 
Would it have once cheered him under a fit of the spleen ? 
Would it have induced him to give us one more allegory, on6 
more life of a poet, one more imitation of Juvenal ? I firmly believe 

not. I firmly believe that a hundred vears ago, when he wa& 

17* 



304 cof'Yiciciir BILL. 

writing our debates for the Gentleman's Magazine, he would very 
much rather have had twopence to buy a plate of shin of beef at a 
cook's shop underground. Considered as a reward to him, the 
difference between a twenty years' term, and a sixty years' term of 
posthumous copyright, would have been nothing or next to 
nothing. But is the difference nothing to us ? I can buv Rasse- 
las for sixpence ; I might have had to give five shillings for it. I 
can buy the Dictionary — the entire genuine Dictionary — for two 
guineas, perhaps for less; I might have had to give five or si? 
guineas for it. Do I grudge this to a man like Dr. Johnson ? 
Not at all. Show me that the prospect of this boon roused him 
to any vigorous effort, or sustained his spirits under depressing 
circumstances, and I am quite willing to pay the price of such an 
object, heavy as that price is. But what I do complain of is that 
my circumstances are to be worse, and Johnson's none the better; 
that I am to give five pounds for what to him was not worth a 
farthing. The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on 
readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is 
an exceedingly bad one ; it is a tax on one of the most innocent 
and most salutary of human pleasures ; and never let us forget, 
that a tax on innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasures. 
I admit, however, the necessity of giving a bounty to genius and 
learning. In order to give such a bounty, I willingly submit even 
to this severe and burdensome tax. Nay, I am ready to increase 
the tax, if it can be shown that by so doing I should proportionally 
increase the bounty. My complaint is, that my hon. and Learned 
Friend doubles, triples, quadruples, the tax, and makes scarcely 
any perceptible addition to the bounty. To recur to the case of Dr. 
Johnson, — what is the additional amount of taxation which would 
nave been levied on the public for Dr. Johnson's works alone, if 
my hon. and learned Friend's bill had been the law of the land ? 
I have not data sufficient to form an opinion. But I am confident 
that the taxation on his Dictionary alone would have amounted to 



COPYRIGHT BILL. 395 

:many thousands of pounds. In reckoning the whole additional 
sum which the holders of his copyrights would have taken out of 
the pockets of the public during the last half century at twenty 
thousand pounds, I feel satisfied that I very greatly under-rate it. 
Now, T again say, that I. think it but fair that we should pay 
twenty thousand pounds in consideration of twenty thousand 
pounds' worth of pleasure and encouragement received by Dr. 
Johnson. But I think it very hard that we should pay twenty 
thousand pounds for what he would not have valued at rive 
shillings. My hon. and learned Friend dwells on the claims of 
the posterity of great writers. Undoubtedly, Sir, it would be very 
pleasing to see a descendant of Shakespeare living in opulence, 
on the fruits of his jrreat ancestor's ofenius. A house maintained 
in splendour by such a patrimony would be a more interesting 
and striking object than Blenheim is to us, or than Strathfieldsaye 
will be to our children. But, unhappily, it is scarcely possible that, 
under any system, such a thing can come to pass. My hon. and 
learned Friend does not propose that copyright shall descend to 
the eldest son, or shall be bound up by irrevocable entail. It is to 
be merely personal property. It is therefore highly improbable 
that it will descend during sixty years or half that term from 
parent to child. The chance is that more people than one will 
have an interest in it. They will in all probability sell it and 
divide the proceeds. The price which a bookseller will give for it 
will bear no proportion to the sum which he will afterwards draw 
from the public, if his speculation proves successful. He will give 
little, if any thing, more for a term of sixty years than for a term 
of thirty or five-and-twenty. The present value of a distant 
advantage is always small ; but when there is great room to doubt 
whether a distant advantage will be any advantage at all, the 
present value sinks to almost nothing. Such is the inconstancy 
of the public taste, that no sensible man will venture to pronounce,. 
yriih confidence, what the sale of any book published in our days 



396 COPYRIGHT BILL. 

will be in the years between 1890 and 1900. The whole fashion 
of thinking and writing has often undergone a change in a raucli 
shorter period than that to which my hon. and learned Friend 
would extend posthumous copyright. What would have been 
considered the best literary property in the earlier part of Charles 
the Second's reign ? I imagine Cowley's poems. Overleap sixty 
years, and you are in the generation of which Pope asked, " who 
now reads Cowley ?" What works were ever expected with more 
impatience by the public than those of Lord Bolingbroke, which 
appeared, I think, in 1*754. In 1814, no bookseller would have 
thanked you for the copyright of them all, if you had offered it 
to him for nothing. What would Paternoster-row give now for 
the copyright of Hayley's Triumphs of Temper, so much admired 
within the memory of many people still living ? I say, therefore, 
that, from the very nature of literary property, it will almost 
always pass away from an author's family; and I say, that the 
price given for it to the family will bear a very small proportion 
to the tax which the purchaser, if his speculation turns out well, 
will in the course of a long series of years levy on the public, 
If, Sir, I wished to find a strong and perfect illustration of the 
effects which I anticipate from long copyright, I should select, 
— my hon. and learned Friend will be surprised, — I should select 
the case of Milton's grand-daughter. As often as this bill has 
been under discussion, the fate of Milton's grand-daughter has 
been brought forward by the advocates of monopoly. My hon. 
and learned Friend has repeatedly told the story with great elo- 
quence and effect. He has dilated on the sufferings, on the abject 
poverty, of this ill-fated woman, the last of an illustrious race. He 
tells us that, in the extremity of her distress, Garrick gave her a 
benefit, that Johnson wrote a prologue, and that the public contri- 
buted some hundreds of pounds. Was it fit, he asks, that she 
should receive, in this ekemosynary form, a small portion of what 
was m truth a 4§t>t? Why, he as^s, inswap! of obtaining a 



COIYUIGHT BILL. ' 

pittance from charity, did she not live in comfort and luxury on 
the proceeds of the sale of her ancestor's works ? But, Sir, will 
my hon. aud learned Friend tell me that this event, which he has 
so often and so pathetically described, was caused by the shortness 
of copyright ? Why, at that time, the duration of copyright was 
longer, than even he, at present, proposes to make it. The mono- 
poly lasted not sixty years, but for ever. At the time at which 
Milton's grand-daughter asked charity, Milton's works were the 
exclusive property of a bookseller. Within a few months of the 
day on which the benefit was given at Garrick's theatre, the holder 
of the copyright of Paradise Lost, I think it was Tonson, applied 
to the Court of Equity for an injunction against a bookseller, who 
had published a cheap edition of the great epic poem, and obtained, 
his injunction. The representation of Comus was, if I remember 
'icfhtly, in 1*750 — the injunction in 1752. Here, then, is a perfect 
illustration of what I conceived to be the effect of long copyright. 
Milton's works are the property of a single publisher. Everybody 
who wants them, must buy them at Tonson's shop, and at Tonson's 
price. Whoever attempts to undersell Tonson is harassed with 
legal proceedings. Thousands who would gladly possess a copy 
of Paradise Lost, must forego that great enjoyment. And what, 
in the meantime, is the situation of the only person for whom we 
can suppose that the author, protected at such a cost to the public, 
was at all interested ? She is reduced to utter destitution. Milton's 
works are under a monopoly. Milton's grand-daughter is starving. 
The reader is pillaged; but the writer's family is not enriched. 
Society is taxed doubly. It has to give an exorbitant price for the 
poems ; and it has at the same time to give alms to the only sur- 
viving descendant of the poet. But this is not all. I think it 
right, Sir, to call the attention of the House to an evil, which is 
perhaps more to be apprehended when an author's copyright 
remains in the hands of his family, thai) when it is transferred to 
booksellers. I seriouslv fear, thftt if &ttdi ft measure as this should be 



308 COPYRIGHT BILL. 

adopted, many valuable works will be either totally suppressed 01 
grievously mutilated. I ear. prove that this danger is not chime- 
rical ; and I am quite certain that, if the danger be real, the safe- 
guards which my hon. and learned Friend has devised are 
altogether nuo-atorv. That the danger is not chimerical may easily 
be shown. Most of us, I am sure, have known persons who, very 
erroneously, as I think, but from the best motives, would not 
choose to reprint Fielding's novels, or Gibbon's History of the 
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Some Gentlemen may 
perhaps be of opinion, that it would be as well if Tom Jones 
and Gibbon's History were never reprinted. I will not, then, dwell 
on these or similar cases. I will take cases respecting which it is 
not likely that there will be any difference of opinion here, cases 
too in which the danger of which I now speak is not matter of 
supposition, but matter of fact. Take Richardson's novels; What- 
ever I may, on the present occasion, think of my hon. and learned 
Friend's judgment as a legislator, I must always respect his judg- 
ment as a critic. He will, I am sure, say that Richardson's 
novels are among the most valuable, among the most original 
works in our language. No writings have done more to raise the 
fame of English genius in foreign countries. No writings are 
more deeply pathetic. No writings, those of Shakespeare excepted, 
show such profound knowledge of the human heart. As to their 
moral tendency, I can cite the most respectable testimony. Dr. 
Johnson describes Richardson as one who had taught the passions 
to move at the command of virtue. My dear and honoured 
Friend, Mr. Wilberforce, in his celebrated religious treatise, when 
speaking of the unchristian tendency of the fashionable novels of 
the eighteenth century, most distinctly excepts Richardson from 
the censure. Another excellent person whom 1 can never mention 
without respect and kindness, Mrs. Hannah More, often declared 
in conversation, and has declared in one of her published poeinsj 
%% $h% ftr^ Jearn&l frop fte writings of BidmrcNn tfcose prince 



C0PVKIHI1T BILL. S'99 

pies of piety, by which her life was guided. I may safely say 
that books celebrated as works of art through the whole civilised 
world, and praised for their moral tendency by Dr. Johnson, by 
Mr. Wilberforce, by Mrs. Hannah More, ought not to be suppressed. 
Sir, it is my firm belief, that if the law had been what my hon 
and learned Friend proposes to make it, they would have beei 
suppressed. I remember Richardson's grandson well ; he w r as a 
clergyman in the city of London ; he was a most upright anc 
excellent man ; but he had conceived a strong prejudice against 
works of fiction. He thought all novel-reading not only frivolous 
but sinful. He said, — this I state on the authority of one of his 
clerical brethren, who is now a bishop ; — he said that he haa lever 
thought it right to read one of his grandfather's books. Suppose 
Sir, that the law had been what my hon. and learned Friend world 
make it. Suppose that the copyright of Richardson's novels I id 
descended, as might well have been the case, to this gentleman. I 
firmly believe, that he would have thought it sinful to give them 
wide circulation. I firmly believe, that he would not for a hundred 
thousand pounds have deliberately done what he thought sinful. 
He would not have reprinted them. And what protection does 
my hon. and learned Friend give to the public in such a case ? 
Why, Sir, what he proposes is this: if a book is not reprinted 
during five years, any person who wishes to reprint it may give 
notice in the London Gazette : the advertisement must be repeated 
three times : a year must elapse ; and then, if the proprietor of 
the copyright does not put forth a new edition, he loses his exclu- 
sive privilege. Now, what protection is this to the public \ What 
is a new edition ? Does the law define the number of copies that 
make an edition ? Does it limit the price of a copy ? Are 
twelve copies on large paper, charged at thirty guineas each, an 
edition ? It has been usual, when monopolies have been granted, 
to prescribe numbers and to limit prices. But I do not find that 
my hon. and learned Friend proposes to do so in the present case, 



400 COt»VKtG«T Bttt. 

And, without some such provision, the security which he offers u 
manifestly illusory. It is my conviction, that under such a system 
as that which he recommends to us, a copy of Clarissa would 
have been as rare as an Aldus or a Caxton. I will give another 
instance. One of the most instructive, interesting, and delightful 
books in our language is Boswell's Life of Johnson. Now it is 
well known that Boswell's eldest son considered this book, consi- 
dered the whole relation of Boswell to Johnson, as a blot in the 
escutcheon of the family. He thought, not perhaps altogether 
without reason, that his father had exhibited himself in a ludicrous 
and degrading light. And thus he became so sore and irritable, 
that at last he could not bear to hear the Life of Johnson men- 
tioned. Suppose that the law had been what my hon. and learned 
Friend wishes to make it. Suppose that the copyright of Boswell's 
Life of Johnson had belonged, as it well might, during sixty years 
to Boswell's eldest son. What would have been the consequence ? 
An unadulterated copy of the finest biographical work in the 
world would have been as scarce as the first edition of Camden. 
These are strong cases. I have shewn you that, if the law had 
been what you are now going to make it, the finest prose work of 
fiction in the language, the finest biographical work in the lan- 
guage, would very probably have been suppressed. But I have 
stated my case weakly. The books which I have mentioned are sin- 
gularly inoffensive books, — books not touching on any of those 
questions which drive even wise men beyond the bounds of 
wisdom. There are books of a very different kind, — books which 
are the rallying points of great political and religious parties. 
What is likely to happen if the copyright of one of these books 
should by descent or transfer come into the possession of some 
hostile zealot? I will take a single instance. It is fifty years since 
John Wesley died ; his works, if the law had been what my hon. 
and learned Friend seeks to make it, would now have been the 
property of some person or other. The sect founded by Wesley 



CO^YiUGtiT fetLL. 401 

is tLe most numerous, the wealthiest, the most powerful, the most 
zealous, of sects. In every election it is a matter of the greatest 
importance to obtain the support of the Wesley an Methodists. 
Their numerical strength is reckoned by hundreds of thousands. 
They hold the memory of their founder in the greatest reve- 
rence ; and not without reason, for he was unquestionably a great 
and a good man. To his authority they constantly appeal. His 
works are in their eyes of the highest value. His doctrinal writings 
they regard as containing the best system of theology ever deduced 
from Scripture. His journals, interesting even to the common 
reader, are peculiarly interesting to the Methodist : for they contain 
the whole history of that singular polity which, weak and despised 
in its beginning, is now, after the lapse of a century, so strong, so 
flourishing, and so formidable. The hymns to which he gave his 
imprimatur are a most important part of the public worship of his 
followers. Now suppose that the copyright of these works 
belonged to some person who holds the memory of Wesley and 
the doctrines and discipline of the Methodists in abhorrence. 
There are many such persons. The Ecclesiastical Courts are at 
this very time sitting on the case of a clergyman of the Established 
Church who refused Christian burial to a child baptized by a 
Methodist preacher. I took up the other day a work which is 
considered as among the most respectable organs of a large and 
growing party in the Church of England, and there T saw John 
Wesley designated as a forsworn priest. Suppose that the works 
of Wesley were suppressed. Why, Sir, such a grievance would 
be enough to shake the foundations of Co* "■••nment. Let Gentlemen 
who are attached to the Church reflect . a moment what their 
feelings would be if the Book of Common Prayer were not to be 
reprinted for thirty or forty years, — if the price of a Book of Com- 
mon Prayer were run up to five or ten guineas. And then let 
them determine whether they will pass a law under which it is 
possible, under which it is probable, that so intolerable a wrong 



402 ooi'vntottT MIX 

may be clone to some sect consisting perhaps of half a million of 
persons. I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the 
House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. 1 
will only say this, — that if the measure before us should pass, and 
should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to 
produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be 
a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd 
acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by 
the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually 
repealed by the smuggler, will this law be virtually repealed by 
piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the 
public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are 
regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouth of 
deserving men. Every body is well pleased to see them restrained 
by the law and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No 
tradesmen of good repute will have anything to do with such 
disgraceful transactions. Pass this law : and that feeling is at an 
end. Men of a character very different from that of the presen 
race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable 
monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed 
in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade 
legal pursuit ; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which 
side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is 
whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pil- 
grim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be 
confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great 
grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a 
hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great 
distress ? Remember too that when once it ceases to be considered 
as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person 
can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes 
nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will 
share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you 



COPYRIGHT BILL. 403 

are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to 
impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of 
the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints 
which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living. 
If I saw, Sir, any probability that this bill could be so amended in 
the committee that my objections might be removed, I would not 
divide the House in this stage. But I am so fullv convinced that 
no alteration which would not seem insupportable to my hon. and 
learned Friend, could render his measure supportable to me, that I 
must move, though with regret, that this bill be read a second time 
this day six months. 



JSSD OF VOL I 



SPEECHES 



BY 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, 

AUTHOR OF "THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMH6 

THE SECOND," "LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME," "ESSAYS FROM 

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, ' ETC., ETC. 



IN TWO VOLUMES, 
VOL. II. 



NEW YORK: 

HURST & CO., Publishers, 



CONTENTS OF VOL. II. 



ParliamenUuy N'oi-./s — Ireland. February 2?, 1841 

Lite Earl of Cardigan. March 5, 1841 ..... 

Do. do. March 8, 1841 

Flogging on the Sabbath— The Earl of Cardigan. April 20, 1841 



April 22. 1841 
May 13, 1841 



Do. do. do. 

Do. do. do. 

Jews' Declaration Bill. March 31, 1841 . 

The Sugar Duties. May 11,1841 *. 

Confidence in the Ministry. May 27, 1841 

Total Repeal of the Corn Laws — Mr. Villiers's Motion. Februa 
1842 

Copyright Bill. April 6, 1842 . . . -. 

Income Tax. April 11, 1842 

Mutiny Bill. Flogging in the Army. April 15, 1842 

The National Petition — The Charter. May 3, 1842 . 

Sunday Travelling on Railways. June 18, 1812 

Lord Ellenborough's Proclamations — Scrvjauth. March 9. \&i 

The Treaty of Washington. March 27, 1843 

State of Ireland. July 7, 1843 

Apprehension of Offenders' Bill — America. August 11, l.'M-'l 

State of Ireland. February 19, 1844 ... 

Dissenters' Chapel Bill June 6. 1844 

Post Office — Opening Letters. June 24, 1844 . 

Do. do July 2, 1844 



y 21, 



5 
21 
25 

27 
29 
31 
35 
40 
49 

62 
78 
89 
102 
105 
1!6 
119 
1 38 
I Ml 

176 
206 
220 
228 



iv 



CONTEXTS. 



The Sugar l)uties. February 26, 1845 

Maynooth College Graiit. April 14, 1845 

l)o. do. April 23, 1845 • . 

Universities (Scotland) Bill. July 9, 1845 . 

Frost, "Williams, and Jones. March 10, 1846 . 

Roman Catholic Relief Bill. February 24, 1847 

Government Plan of Education. April 19, 1847 

Affairs of Portugal. June 14, 1847 . 

The Hustings at Edinburgh. Ju;y 29, 1847 

His Inauguration as Lord Rector of Glasgow University. 
1849 

His Re election to Parliament. November 2, 1852 



March 21, 



FAtifc 

232 
255 
271 
293 
811 
321 
328 
353 
368 

373 
382 



MACAULATS SPEECHES- 

PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS— IRELAND. * 

FEBRUARY 23, 1841. 

Sin, it' this were a mere legal question, I should think it most 
presumptuous in me to interfere. If this were a question to be 
decided by local knowledge, I should be equally disposed to leave 
it to the numerous representatives of the Irish constituencies who 
have shown an inclination to address the House. l>ut as it appears 
to me that at this stage of the bill, at least, it is possible, for one 
who pretends to neither legal nor local knowledge, to form an 
opjnion of the subject of which it treats, I shall venture to state 
what appear to me to be the grounds on which a representative 
of a British constituency, bringing to the subject no knowledge 
beyond that general information which is common to every hon. 
Member, may feel himself justified in supporting the second reading 
of the bill. Sir, in what I have to say, I shall attempt to follow 
the precept rather than the example of the hon. and learned Gen- 
tleman who has just sat down. The hon. and learned Member 
began by declaring his intention to go into none of the questions 
which might, with more advantage, be regularly discussed when 
you have left the chair; but I must say, that it appears to me 
that the greater part of his observations did relate to questions of 
detail — to important questions of detail I admit; but I never can 
consider, that whether the time be fourteen years, or whether the 
sum be 5/., are other than questions of detail. Sir, I do conceive, 
however extraordinary that avowal may seem to hon. Gentlemeu 

♦ Hansard, 3d Series, vol. lvi. p. 926-989, 



6 PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS IRELAND. 

opposite — I do conceive, that if any lion. Gentleman in this House 
be convinced that the test proposed by my noble Friend be the 
best test— then, although he might be disposed to think that the 
sum of 5/. was too low — then, although he might be disposed to fix 
it at 6/., 7/., 8/., or 10/., I should say he would still be acting 
in a reasonable and Parliamentary manner if he voted for the 
second reading. For my own part, I believe, for 1 had not then 
the honour of a seat in this House, that this was the case in 
discussing another bill of great importance, the Irish Municipal 
Bill — the general principle of the bill having been approved of, it 
was read a second time with the support of many hon. Members, 
although several divisions were subsequently taken by them upon 
its details. Sir, I have no hesitation in stating, that I do believe 
that the evils which are to be apprehended from the restriction 
of the franchise in Ireland are greater than those which are to be 
dreaded from its extension. Sir, whether the test of my noble 
Friend should be adopted or uot, I should see with satisfaction 
that a greater proportion of votes should be given to the large 
counties of Cork and Down. I think it better that they should 
have 8,000 rather than 2,000 voters, but whether they are to have 
8,000 or 2,000, still I prefer the test of my noble Friend near me 
to the undefined franchise in the bill of the noble Lord. Sir, I 
shall at present not touch upon the question of the amount of 
the franchise — I shall confine myself to the principle of the bill, 
and it will be necessary for me to follow the example of the noble 
Lord, and look, not at my noble Friend's bill alone, but also a 
the other bill that accompanies it on the table of the House. The 
case is certainly a grave and important one, for it involves a right 
which is the foundation of all other lights. Serious evils are 
admitted to exist with regard to that precious and important right"; 
both parties in the State admit the existence of these evils, and 
both have come forward with remedies which are now lying on 
your table, and it is for the House to decide between them, Sir, I 



PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS — TRELAVD. 7 

ftahnot disguise from myself the fact that it is not on these tsvc 
bills alone we are sitting in judgment. I say, that each of these 
bills appears to me to be strongly marked by all the great avA 
characteristic features of the party from which it proceeds. Those 
who with so much zeal and perseverance support the noble Lord 
opposite, will not be disinclined to admit that his measure embodies 
their feelings, while I, and my Friends around me, are of opinion 
that my noble Friend's bill involves those great principles upon 
which we think the legislation of the country should be carried on. 
Now what is the end and object of registration ? If there be any 
person who thinks that a Bill of Registration should be a Bill of 
Disfranchisement in disguise — if there be any person who thinks 
that we ought so to frame the law as to filch from the people as 
much as possible of that power which the liberality of a substan- 
tive law has given them covertly — there are many who may think 
fit to act upon that suggestion, but there are few who will avow 
it, they will support the bill of the nol>le Lord. I shall, therefore, 
in what I have to offer to the House, take the proposition for 
granted — a proposition which may be disliked but cannot be 
disputed — that the object of a Registration Bill is to keep out bad 
voters and let in good ones. This is not a simple object — it 
aims at two things quite distinct, and which may be incompatible. 
Jt is possible to concei e that there may be a law giving ample 
facilities for the admission of honest voters, but at the same time 
permitting a crowd of dishonest voters to press in. It is equally 
obvious that there may be a law enacting such severe scrutiny 
that the dishonest voters cannot pass muster, but that such a law 
will keep out many honest voters. Sir, it is the severest trial of 
legislation to deal with such cases. When there is only a single 
object, the case is comparatively easy ; but when there is a double 
object, both cannot be secured in perfection. Now, if the bill of 
my noble Friend be superior in any respect to that of the noble 
Lord opposite, it consists in giving facilities to the registration ot 



6 PAftliAMENTAtlY VOTERS — tnEtAtft). 

voters. Hon. Gentlemen opposite say, that the danger is greatel 

from an undue extension of the franchise, but I think the dangei 

is greater from an improper restriction of the franchise. Argument 

upon that subject is almost unnecessary ; but it is clear to me that 

in both respects the bill of my noble Friend is superior to the bill 

of the noble Lord, and more efficient for keeping out bad, and 

letting in good voters. Take the machinery provided for keeping 

out dishonest voters. My noble Friend's machinery is this : he 

employs a test to ascertain the franchise, which is inseparably 

connected with a. check, acting without any object to put it in 

motion, and without any summons, subpoena, assistant barristers, 

or judges of assize. lie strikes at motives — he attacks principles 

— he dives into the nature of things, into the heart of man for 

his remedy ; at the same time my noble Friend's check operates 

without in the smallest degree impeding the honest voter, or 

without dragging him from his home, without causing him the 

slightest anxiety, or levying on him any pecuniary charge. Now 

I say that such a test as that appioaches as nearly as possible to 

that at which we should aim. Sir, when I turn to the noble Lord's 

bill, what is the check to keep out dishonest voters ? I have looked 

through the bill, and I find absolutely only this one against the 

intrusion of fraudulent voters — eternally trying over and over 

a^ain at the same question ad infinitum. Now if the object be to 

reduce^ the constituency — if the object be to leave it only the 

mere name and shadow of a constituency — then I say that this 

plan has been well concerted for its aim, and it is worthy of the 

abilities which no man can deny to the noble Lord. If, however, 

I look at it as a measure presented in good faith to prevent fraud 

and perjury, then I can designate it by no other name than 

childish — as childish, for it is a system of preventing fraudulent 

registration, but making the registration of good voters in the 

highest degree impracticable. No doubt it will keep some 

impostors out of the registry, aud so if we were to select every 



PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS — IRELAtfi). § 

tentli man in London there is no doubt that some rogues would 
be sent to the tread-mill, but that I call a childish system of 
legislation. Sir, I do not call that a preventive of fraudulen* 
registration, but a childish system, which is not directed against 
the fraud, but which is directed against all voters, the long and 
short, the biue-eyed and black-eyed, honest and dishonest. Sir 
the noble Lord's test is one which has no reference either to 
honesty or dishonesty. It will disfranchise all alike. T speak in 
the presence of many eminent lawyers, in the presence of many 
men well acquainted with the law of this country and of Scotland, 
with our civil law and our Oriental dependencies, and I ask them 
what they think of this system of eternal revision ? I ask the lion, 
and learned Gentleman who has just sat down, and I should be 
glad to have his opinion upon the point, what does he think of this 
as the only check upon fraud ? What does he think of a system, in 
which, every year, objections may be brought before the Assistant 
Barrister, and if the Assistant Barrister approves of the vote, an 
appeal may be had to the Judge of Assize ; next year, precisely 
the same objection may be taken in the very same words, he may 
be again compelled to go before the Judge of the Assize, and so 
on for ever and ever. In order to keep his franchise during one 
Parliament, in order to give one vote, the elector is exposed to this 
vexation, that he may be seven times compelled to go before the 
Assistant Barrister, and seven times before the Court of Appeal 
and if a man acquires the franchise when he comes to the years 
of discretion, and lives to the age of seventy, he may have IOC 
law-suits to keep his name on the register ; he may spend 1000/. 
and not less than six months of his time in pursuit of his vote. 
[CAeers,] Unless Gentlemen can by interruption remove the words 
from the bill of the noble Lord, or distort (hose words out of their 
plain meaning, I conceive they may as well give up the subject. 
These are the words — that is their meaning. If it be said, that 
the right or power which the noble Lord gives the objectors — if it 

1* 



15 PAkifAMEKf A-iiY Voters — ikfeLANl). 

be said, that it will not be abused, I answer that I beneve it will, 
and I say it is the business of a wise and virtuous legislature not 
to establish such a power, trusting that some undefined feelings 
should prevent men from abusing it. I again ask men of both 
sides of the House — men of eminent legal knowledge — such men 
as the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just sat down ; I ask 
him what he thinks of such a principle as this, and what he thinks 
of those arguments, by which the noble Lord has attempted to 
vindicate his measure, and which he repeated whenever the subject 
has been discussed, and which he repeated last night ? The noble 
Lord said, I will never agree to part with this portion of my bill, 
For if I do, then the person who has once established himself upon 
the register, by fraud or perjury, can never be removed. Does the 
noble Lord sav, that that argument will hold good in all cases ? 
What says the law of England ? " If a man is once tried for a 
crime and acquitted, then, although he be acquitted by an alibi 
supported by perjury or any fraudulent cause — although you may 
have evidence by which you can bring the matter home to him 
— you cannot again put him in jeopardy for the same case." 
What says the law of England in civil cases ? " if a man bring 
an action for debt or damage — if in that action judgment goes 
against him from any such cause as that a witness breaks his leg 
and is, therefore, unavoidably absent, he shall not be again suffered 
to bring an action in the same case." If that be the law of England 
in criminal matters — if that be the law of England in civil matters, 
on what principle ought we to depart from it in the elective fran- 
chise ? The noble Lord is bound to make out distinctly such a 
case, and tell us why we should not proceed the same way in the 
one instance as in the other. When we do not go on in this 
manner, hearing and re-hearing in the case of the fraudulent 
debtor, who has obtained an estate to which he has no title, why 
should we go on hearing and re-hearing for ever in the elective 
franchise? If I am asked why the law of England is framed in a 



PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS IRELAND. 11 

different manner from that in which the noble Lord proposes in 
his bill for the registration, I answer, that the law was framed in 
that respect by men who took broad general views of the subject on 
which they legislated — who did not fix their eyes pertinaciously upon 
individual cases that might happen at times to arise in the course 
of events. They say, it may be an evil that the assassin should go 
about the streets bearding the family and friends of his victim 
with impunity ; but it would be a vastly greater evil that all the 
families in the community could not live in peace and security. 
It may be a great evil, that the fraudulent debtor should keep 
possession of the estate which he has unjustly acquired, but it 
would be bv far a greater evil, that all honest men should be 

■ © 

insecure in their property, and that all society should be kept in a 
ferment of litigation. As you bear with the felon and the debtor, 
who are dishonest and successful in the courts of law, and who 
resist just claims, even so ought you to bear with the fraudulent 
voter, who is falsely put on the register, rather than go on eternally 
trying and trying the same objection. Contrary to the whole 
system of English jurisprudence, the voter who has got on the list 
of voters bv perjury or fraud, is to be tried again and again. The 
noble Lord says his object is to prevent perjury, but the noble 
Lord must know, that litigation is a fertile source of crime — a 

* © 

fertile source of perjury. This litigation would produce more 
perjury and inconvenience in a single year, than all the wrong 
decisions prorounced according to law would produce in a century. 
Thus stands the case. I conceive my noble Friend has proposed 
a remedy for existing abuses, which will certainly keep out those 
who have not a right to vote, and let in without trouble or incon- 
venience those who have the right. I conceive, that the noble 
Lord (Lord Stanley) has proposed a system which will not only 
have the effect of keeping out those who have not a right to vote; 
but will keep out everybody without distinction who dislikes 
vexation, and expense, and trouble, and anxiety ; who dislike* 



1 - PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS IRELAND. 

feeing counsel ; who dislikes incurring the risk of having to pa) 
costs ; these persons the noble Lord's bill will disfranchise. That 
the noble Lord's bill will disfranchise wholesale, men who have a 
right to vote, I do not at all doubt. One reason why I believe his 
system will disfranchise many who have a right to vote, is this, 
that I am certain it would disfranchise myself. I possess a vote 
for the University of Cambridge; now, the vote of an elector of 
an Irish county is not, I think, as important as that of an elector 
of the University of Cambridge. His vote is given for two Mem- 
bers of Parliament. He also votes for dignities and situations 
which are objects of importance to great men, and even to Princes 
of the Blood. A vote, then, in an university is surely a more 
valuable possession than a similar one in any Irish county. The 
member of the senate of a university is generally more able to 
assert his right than an Irish voter. Yet, I declare, that if a 
svstem like the noble Lord's were established to register my vote 
in Cambridge — if I were liable by any Master of Arts, who 
differed from me in politics, to be compelled to go down to Cam- 
bridge and dance attendance on the senate-house for two days, 
how long think you should I retain that vote ? Indignation might 
support me under such an insult for some time. I might go down 
once or so for the purpose, not indeed of lending much assistance 
to the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Goulburn) — I might go 
down on some pressing occasion, but disgust would soon weary 
me out. And now, what will the Irish farmer do, who is much 
more helpless than I am, when he finds himself exposed to these 
great vexations and obstacles, which the noble Lord's bill throws 
in the way of his acquiring the franchise ? I think, Sir, however 
imperfectly I have explained myself, that it is my duty to give a 
reason for my belief that the great object of a Registration Bill is 
the keeping out of voters that ought to be kept out, and the letting 
in of voters who ought to be let in. The bill of my noble Friend is 
decidedly superior to the bill of the noble Lord opposite for thp 



PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS-- IKELASE. 13 

purpose. But is there anything in the means employed by the 

i!ol)le Lord which does serve the useful purpose of making a 
fttlutary registration bill, and which Ought to be adopted ? My 
nolle Friend defines the franchise. The ncble Lord proposes to 
leave the franchise undefined. Is it possible to doubt there is 
anything more important, any duty more sacred for the Legislature 
to perform, than to give a clear and precise definition of the Irish 
franchise ? I will not go into the question whether the minority 
of the judges ought to be bound by the majority. I do not 
pretend to speak of it as a lawyer. I might ask some questions ; 
I might make some distinctions which 1 would be glad to hear 
solved ingenuously by the hon. and learned Gentleman who has 
just sat down. But I will not go into the question. We have 
the plain fact, that eight judges are for one definition, and four 
for another ; twelve or fourteen assistant barristers take one view 
of the question, and eighteen or twenty take an opposite view 
What was the law in 1840, is not the law in 1841 ; what is the 
law on one side of the stream, is not the law on the other side; 
what is the law before the Chief Justiee, is not the law before the 
Chief Baron. Is it possible to conceive a state of things more 
scandalous than this? Why resist any attempt that should be 
made to settle these difficulties ? Is there any more sacred debt 
from a Legislature to a people, than to give definite laws * Is 
there any part of the law more important than that upon which 
the making of all law depends? In Ireland, this pan, vi ti.o i HW 
is in a state utterly undefined, and you leave it in that undefined 
state, ami then you complain of those very offences for which you 
yourselves are responsible. Well, under these circumstances come 
forward two parties of the Legislature, the noble Lord on the one 
side, and my noble Friend on the other. The latter ascertains the 
franchise— he fixes the law. The law of procedure becomes simple 
and efficient — there is no vexation caused to the rightful claimant 
«*-the wrongful claimant is at once removed. My noble Friend 



"1 t PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS IRELAND. 

guards against perjury by abolishing the taking of oaths. Fraud 
and personation, to quote the phrase of the "lion. Member for 
Coleraine, vanish at once. But what does the noble Lord ? lie 
comes forward with his bill, and he leaves the substantive law in 
the state of perplexity in which he finds it. lie then sets to work 
on the law of procedure, and makes it ten times more embarrass- 
ing than it was before, and the effect is what we might suppose 
— it produces phenomena so strange, restriction so extravagant as 
hardly to be paralleled in all legislation. One of these phenomena 
was alluded to bv the riffiit lion, and learned Gentleman, the 
Attornev-o-eneral, and it is even more extravagant than it was 
represented by him. In the county of Dublin, for instance, if 
there is an objection established against a vote tried before the 
assistant-barrister, there lies an appeal from him to any one of 
three courts which the rejected claimant may choose, each of 
which courts takes different views of the subject. The fact is, the 
Court of Exchequer always decides in favour of the beneficial 
interest class of claimants, and the Court of Queen's Bench in 
favour of the solvent tenant test. The effect of this system is, 
that whoever is objected to in the court below r is sure of victory 
in the court above. The decisions of the assistant-barrister for 
Dublin are certain of being carried out by the rule of contrary. 
It would be a curious and strange case of casuistry to point out 
how the assistant-barrister for Dublin is bound to decide on this 
aU pci^>«. if lie decide according to his opinions and the dictates 
of his conscience — his decision is sure to be reversed in the courts 
above — should he decide contrary to his opinions in order to have 
that decision reversed, and the effect produced, that he felt it his 
duty to bring about? Is this a mere oversight ? No. This is 
one of the effects of the attempt to proceed with the substantive 
Jaw undefined. AH the abjections of the noble Lord to my noble 
Friend's bill resolve themselves into one— the principle of finality. 
The question is, will you disturb the Reform Bill ? I will oot a>\ 



PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS IRELAND. ] O 

present go into that subject generally. I will not go info that 
subject generally, I say, because I propose to reason on this ques- 
tion upon those principles which are held by all those Conserva 
tive Gentlemen that I have the happiness of knowing. I propose 
to reason on Conservative principles, and if on those principles ] 
cannot command the assent of Gentlemen opposite, I will not 
appeal to the principles of popular rights and popular liberties. 
I will admit, that the Reform Bill ought to be continued inviolate, 
that it ought to be in full force in Ireland. Is it in force in Ire- 
land ? Certainly not. If the meaning of the Reform Bill be that 
the beneficial interest test be applied, then the Reform Bill is not 
in force, for there are counties where the solvent tenant test is 
applied. Is the meaning of the Reform Bill that the solvent 
tenant test be applied? Then, also, is the Reform Bill not in force, 
for there are counties where the beneficial interest test is applied. 
These things are changing backwards and forwards, and the coun- 
ties in which the beneficial interest test was applied last year are 
different from the counties in which it is applied this year. Now, 
if any person would define such a principle, is it by leaving all 
things as they are? Such a state of things amounts to finality. 
From an exceeding aversion to change, you uphold a system with 
a principle which is ever changing. I speak to reasonable advo- 
cates of finality — to Gentlemen who use the word only in the 
sense in which any man, Conservative or Whig, ever used it. 
When they talk of finality, is it not that a certain act should 
stand unrepealed in the volume of the statute book ? This then 
is the course pursued, to give to fluctuation such as was never 
known among a civilized people, the name of stability — and then 
if the friends of finality come forward to close this eternal whirl 
of revolution, to cry out, that we are unsettling the stability of our 
institutions. Stability ! When there was one law in September, 
and another in May ; one in Cork, and another in Mayo ; one 
system upheld in the Court of Queen's Bench, and another in the 



if> PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS IRELAND. 

Court of Exchequer ! Stability ! When the constituency of a 
county may be 2,000 or 4,000, as Mr. Baron This, or Mr. Justice 
That, shall have a fit of the gout before the next assizes ! Tho 
question is not between change and no change — the question is 
between unchange and eternal succession of changes — betweea one 
change made by the Legislature, and a succession of changes 
made by the courts of law. Now, I conceive all reasonable Con- 
servatives will acknowledge one change to be better than a hun- 
dred. I conceive we all agree, that changes in the Constitution 
ought to be made in the Legislature, and not in the courts of law. 
Consider in what a situation you place the courts of law. Is it 
possible to imagine anything more shocking to any person of just 
feeling, than that when the judges meet to settle what circuit 
they shall take, they determine which counties shall have a demo- 
cratic franchise, and which a restricted one ? It is impossible but 
that it must deprive the judicial body of the respect of society. 
[Mr. Shaw : Hear /] I am glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman 
cheer me, but I fear I shall find him opposing the only efficacious 
remedy. I do say I can conceive no system more pernicious than 
that a Government should denend on the feelings of individual 
judges, and that when a new jwdge is appointed, it should be 
said, " We have got a new judge. We have lost Kerry, but shall 
have a change in Sligo." Is it possible to conceive a system so 
opposite to morality and to all good feeling? Vote for my noble 
Friend's bill, and you will be out of this situation in three months, 
I say the necessary effect of such a system is this, that our free 
constitution and the administration of justice are alike in danger. 
You have, on the one hand, the Constitution quibbled away by 
the subtlety of the bar, and, on the other hand, you have 
the judicial tribunal agitated with all the violence of the 
hustings. The greatness of this evil is not disputed, and how 
does the noble Lord deal with it ? My noble Friend furnishes a 
measure which will at once put an end to it. It is impossible, after 



PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS — IRELAND. ! I 

ray noble FriercPs bill passes, that the question can divide the 
bench of Ireland longer. The noble Lord leaves the question 
unsettled. He only plunges the judges deeper and deeper into the 
mire, and gives them a greater number of questions to try, in 
which the precise difficulty arises. Of all the persons who can 
complain of the noble Lord's bill, there are none who ought to 
complain so much as the judges. The noble Lord, Sir, can feel for 
vour situation. He addressed vou in words to the feeling of which 
every Gentleman of both sides of ihe House will respond, and 
which I would attempt to repeat, could I give them with the same 
grace and propriety ; but in thinking of your situation, Sir, he 
forgot the situation of the judges. Consider how different the 
cases. The noble Lord, who scruples to give to a person who 
ought to be impartial, the nomination of the persons who are to 
decide questions of registration, has no scruple to give the power 
of deciding political cases to persons whose reputation, of all others, 
should be the least sullied with the taint of partisanship, and the 
least subject to suspicion. To me, it seems beyond all doubt, that 
if the noble Lord's pill passes, there will not be, in a short time, a 
judge in Ireland, however pure his intentions, or however great 
his sagacity, who will not be called an oppressor or a demagogue 
by the one party or the other. Now, to sum up, it appears to me, 
that the bill of my noble Friend will exclude those, who under 
the new system will not have a right to vote, while it will 
admit the greatest facility to those who will have, that right; that 
it will substitute certainty instead of doubt, and rescue the 
judges from the most calamitous position in which they are 
placed. The bill of the noble Lord will not do this. It provides 
no security against the intrusion of wrong claimants, and throws 
every imaginable difficulty in the way of the rightful claimant, 
and it leaves doubt, and change, and revolution, where it found 
litem. Instead of telling the judges what is the meaning of the 
jaw, i: icayes it unsettled, and gives them another set of question* 



i 3 PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS — IRELAND. 

to decide. I think, whatever parts of the evil system the nobta 
Lord has touched, he has only aggravated them. He has left 
it uncertain, that it may be more oppressive; he has degraded the 
judges, that he may disfranchise the people; 'he has provided a 
machinery which, where it detects one perjury, will introduce 
twenty. I hardly know on what principle the noble Lord car 
vindicate his bill. This is the bill which the noble Lord places 
side by side with others ; and this suggests to me a topic on whicl 
T will say three or four words. The noble Lord misrepresented 
yesterday the whole nature of his bill, and of its relation to ours 
and their relative relation to the franchise. He said his bill and 
ours, considered as bills of registration, were not essentially differ- 
ent, but then, says he, " comes the franchise as a tack ;" now thai 
I utterly and altogether deny. I say, the rule laid down, with 
respect to the franchise, is the essence of our bill. And I say, 
when the noble Lord brings forward a number of clauses of mj 
noble Friend's bill analogous to clauses of his own, and says if 
there were oppressions in my bill, why place them in your own \ 
the answer is, that having that franchise clearly ascertained in the 
Government bill from one end to the other, it turns that which m 
the noble Lord's bill would be a source of litigation and mischief 
into that which may be efficient and usefuL As to the feeling, 
Sir, with which these bills are regarded in Ireland, though I may 
i egret the warmth with which persons in that country have some- 
times expressed themselves, I think it right to make the mosl 
ample allowance for this, because I am satisfied the question k 
— shall Ireland have the reality, or only the name of an electoral 
system ? In the decision of that question, Sir, public order is as 
deeply interested as public liberty. And I was glad to observe, 
that the hon. Member for Cavan expressed the opinion, that anj 
great restriction or diminution of the number possessing the 
elective franchise in Ireland would be a serious calamity to the 
country. We have lessons enough to prove it to us — lessons man? 



PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS- IkELAND. 10 

of which are not forgotten. It is unnecessary to state, after the 
warnings we have had, that great bodies of men, that all nations, 
when debatred from those organs which the Constitution gives 
them, will certainly nnd other organs more formidable. It is unne- 
cessary to look back any great length of time for the effect that 
would be produced, if Limerick, Cork, or Mayo, were represented 
in this House by chiefs of the Orange Society, or by those of the 
old Dublin corporation. [OA/] Some Gentlemen, who make 
that cry, may remember 1829; they may remember, that when 
there was not a single Catholic in either House of Parliament, 
even the Duke of Wellington shrunk from conflict with the excited 
population of Ireland. They might learn the same lesson from 
ether times. The time when the Catholic question was settled 
was a time of peace. There have been times different from that 
— times when England lias been forced to struggle with formidable 
enemies to maintain her place among the nations of Europe. It 
was so during the American Revolution and the French Revolu- 
tionary war. During both we endeavoured to govern Ireland like 
a conquered province, and what was the result? During the 
American war the Irish wrung from you in your own despite an 
acknowledgment of the commercial independence of Ireland. 
During the French war, they engaged in a fatal and calamitous 
struggle for independence. Happily it failed, but if Lord Duncan 
had not fallen in with the Texel fleet — [Oh/ oh/] There was 
such a man, and such a fleet. If a great French army had landed 
in Mur.sfev, in that struggle, it would have tasked to the utmost 
t)ie energies of England. This calamity had, however, been 
arrested by an unmerited and an unrequited interposition of Provi- 
dence ; but comparatively favourable as was the result, was it, he 
would ask, no small evil, that whilst the French nation were 
pushing their arms in conquest beyond the Rhine and the Alps, 
England no x emulating the glories of Blenheim, nor anticipating 
the triumph of Waterloo, was bent only on making wt>r upon her 



20 PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS — IRELAND. 

own subjects ?, - Was it no small evil, that whilst Macdonald an 
Massena were extending tlieir conquests beyond the Alps and th 
Rhine, our Corn wal lis and Abercrombie were displaying thei 
valour and directing British arms in hostile collision with men, whoi 
under a better system they might have been leading to victor 
against the common foes of their country. But the retributiu 
which ensued was just, natural, and inevitable; so true is it that 
government which seeks safety and security by injustice, must see 
it in vain. Let us not, therefore, fall into the same error now, bi 
listen, while it is yet time, to the call of the people of Ireland ; 
generous and noble-minded people ; let us listen and respond t 
their call, not insult them with a brand the most odious to all nobi 
and generous natures — not press the iron of oppression into the 
very souls — not exasperate them with that most odious form c 
tyranny — the tyranny of caste over caste, and creed over cree( 
Let us reject the evil counsels of the oppressor, and by so doin 
wrest the most formidable weapons out of the hand of the agits 
tor — in a word, let us endeavour to preserve and cement such a 
union of feelings between the sister island as shall give stability t 
the legislative union already existing, and which nothing wi 
thereafter endanger but actual misgovern ment. Let us convei 
that part of the empire, which has so often been the seat of weal 
ness and disgrace, into a source of g^ory and strength — let i 
endeavour to strike terror into the hearts of all those, be they i 
vhat part of the globe they may, who either hate or envy oij 
noble country — and let us do so by firmly uniting twenty-seve 
millions of devoted British hearts in irresistible array under th 
siime equal laws, and under the same parental Crown, 



el 



THE EARL OF CARDIGAN,* 

MARCH 5, 1841. 

On t? e Supply Bill — A Reference having been made to the acti 
of tin justifiable severity traced to Lord Cardigan. 

J certainly did not expect that a topic of such violent irritatior 
would have been brought forward, under such circumstances, ana 
that I should not have been enabled to give it that full consider- 
ation which would have enabled me to avoid in its discussion 
hurting the feelings of anyone, or adding to the excitement which 
h;is been already too great. T shall state in the most direct man 
no?, yet without the most remote intention of wounding the 
feelings of any lion. Gentleman, what are the general principles 
which guided her Majesty's Government in this matter, and which 
1 firmly believe, notwithstanding any temporary irritation, will 
ultimately be held to be sound and ju^t. In the first place, 1 shall 
appeal to the lion. Member for Kilkenny himself, whether it be in 
his power to suggest or imagine any dishonourable motive which 
could have prompted the conduct of the Government on this 
occasion. Who is Lord Cardigan ? Is he their political friend — is 
lie a supporter of theirs ? I know that the lion. Gentleman and 
some others have sometimes brought charges against the Govern- 
ment of cowardice ; but in this case he certainly cannot urge such 
a charge, when they acted in the face of the whole press — of the 
general cry of the whole country ? Could Lord Cardigan go to a 
theatre that he was not insulted ? Could he take his place in a 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. lvi. p. 1396-1399. 



22 TtiE EARI OF CARDlClAft. 

railway train without having a hiss raised against him ? Wf 

there ever a case in which a man was more violently and inten 

perately assailed ? Without wishing to assert that Lord Cardiga 

is faultless (on that point I do not give an opinion) — if he had bee 

Hare the accomplice of Burke, or any other person impugned o 

the most criminal charge, instead of being accused with faults c 

temper and manner, could stronger, or more violent, or more inten 

perate means be taken to mark the public aversion ? When tl 

Government resolved not to dismiss from the service a man thi 

attacked by the press on both sides, and by the public of bol 

parties, they are not certainly entitled to say they were right ; b 

they are entitled to ask every person who gives the slightest atte 

tion to the subject, could they have any other motive than 

sincere regard for the interests of the public service. Now, the 

how stands the case ? Here is a man at the head of the force 

who has led an army to victory — a man whose integrity and hono 

have neyer been impeached during the tlrrteen years that he he 

his hio;h office — a man who has served different administrations, ai 

possessed the confidence alike of the Duke of Wellington, of Lo 

Grey, and of the present noble Lord at the head of her Majesty 

Government, and who has throughout this long period act< 

honourably and fairly by every administration, to whom he gave t3 

full benefit of his great abilities and experience, this distinguish' 

man was decidedly of opinion that there was no ground whatev 

for instituting any proceedings by court-martial against the E* 

of Cardigan. His opinion was, that instead of such a proceed ii 

settling the disputes which had arisen, it would be an absurd com 

to take, because it would be impossible to frame any charge agair 

Lord Cardigan of which a court-martial could take cognizance. 

believe, he was also of opinion that without such a court-martial 

would be unjust to take measures for dismissing Lord Cardig 

from her Majesty's service. Was Lord Cardigan, then, to be p 

on the half-pay list? That is not the principle on which the ha 



THE EARL OF CARDIGAN. 23 

pay of this country has been established, nor one to which, while 
I remain Secretary-at-War, it shall be perverted. The half-pay is 
no punishment. It is given partly as a reward for past services, 
and partly as a retainer for future services. Why should it be made 
a reward for offences ; or should a retainer be given to a man who 
had proved himself entirely unfit for the service of the Crown ? 
What alternative remained ? A court-martial, or dismissal from 
the service. Now, that a dismissal from the service, without a 
court-martial, would be a serious and fatal injury to the army, I 
have the authority of the Commander-in-Chief for asserting; and 
I may add, without any breach of confidence, the authority of one 
other name, which stands higher, which stands even higher than 
the noble Lord's (Lord Hill's) in general estimation and profes- 
sional eminence. W T hat remains ? The dismissal of an officer 
without any legal impugnment ? I am far from thinking, that the 
prerogative of dismissal without reasons is not one which the 
Crown should possess, because I know it is possible to imagine a 
case in which the safety of the State might depend on the exercise 
of such prerogative; but it should never be lightly exercised ; and 
the army have an exceeding interest in great caution being 
observed in wielding it. This rule should be observed in every 
service, but especially in ours, where the pay of an officer is not 
much more than the interest which he would receive for his pur- 
chase money from any insurance office. I do not mean to say, 
that officers should acquire a vested interest in their commissions 
to stand against the prerogative of the Crown, where the public 
interests require it to be exercised, but I maintain the smallness 
of the income derived from military service, is an additional rea- 
son why we should be slow to advise any such strong measure as 
taking away a man's commission on slight grounds. Can any 
motive, then, warrant an unusual course in the present instance? 
The precedent established in the case of a rich man, may soon be 
applied to a poor man, and the removal of an unpopular man may 



■24 



THE EAKL OF CARDIGAN 



be quickly followed by that of one who should resemble Lord 
Cardigan in nothing but that he regularly voted against the 
Government. 1 will venture to say, that bo Ministers of the Crown 
were ever before censured on the floor of the House of Commons 
for not punishing a military opponent, in whose case it was impos- 
sible to have a court-martial. These are the principles which 
guided her Majesty's Government, and which satisfied them that 
they could not have dismissed this officer without a court-martial 
— that they could not have resorted to the half-pay as a punish- 
ment with regard to him, and that it would be in the highest 
degree prejudicial to the army to establish a precedent for the dis- 
missal of an officer for imputed faults of manner and temper, of 
such a nature, that it was impossible to make them capable of 
proof before a court-martial. Having deliberately come to that 
opinion, the clamour which has been raised ought only, and has 
only, determined the Government to adhere to it the more firmly. 
I say nothing of Lord Cardigan ; I don't pretend to say that he is 
faultless ; but I insist, that the principles on which, the Government 
acted are sound ones. I am quite sure, that their motives were 
pure and conscientious, and if they are not done justice to tills 
day or to-morrow, a very few months will elapse before those who 
are loudest in clamouring against them, will admit them to have 
been in the right. 



26 



MARCH 8, 1841.* 

lis would appeal to the House whether he had said that public 
opinion should be set at defiance. He had used no such words, 
But he had said, and he always should say, that when he was 
satisfied that a certain course was required by his public duty on a 
case, the circumstance of clamour being raised, which was in a 
degree unjust and intemperate, was only an additional reason why 
a man of spirit and confidence should firmly do that which he 
considered himself bound to perform. No one respected the 
opinion of his countrymen more than he did, and he did so 
because he believed that they were willing to hear what was to be 
said on both sides of a question, because he believed that there was 
a disposition in this country to respect men who, even in opposi 
tion to. a strong public clamour, should discover and act upon their 
conscientious feelings. He believed that the course which the 
Government had taken, was that which was just to the service, 
and which would really promote the true interests of the country, 
and, because he thought so, no clamour and no intemperate view 
of the case should drive him on. He had not intended to rise 
upon this occasion, and he had only addressed the House in conse- 
quence of what had fallen from the hon. Member for Kilkenny. 
He believed, that he could make many corrections as to matters 
of fact which had been alluded to in the course of the evening. 
He would refer to the expressions attributed to him by the hon, 
Member for Bridport, which were not such as he had used. He 
believed that 'he communication of Lord Hill was a general adino- 

* Haur.iir 3 ., cV Scries, vol. lvii p. 30-32. 

vol. i; 



26 THE EARL OF CARDIGAN. 

nition to the regiment, to the effect that the dissensions between 
the commanding officer, and some of the other officers, had a ten- 
dency to render the corps inefficient. There was, on the other 
hand, abundance of evidence to show that Lord Cardigan, what- 
ever might be the grounds of complaint against him, had brought 
the regiment into the highest state of discipline, and that this had 
occurred within an extraordinarily short time after its return from 
India. lie could not sit down without adverting to what had 
fallen from the hon. and learned Member for Dublin, on the sub- 
ject of the condition of the Roman Catholic soldiers iri the army 
He quite agreed with the hon. and learned Member, that whatever 
opinions we might hold, or whatever measures w r e might adopt, as 
to our religious establishments at home, the recruit of the Roman 
Catholic persuasion who was taken up in Ireland and conveyed 
I 5,000 miles off, into the midst of a Pagan country, ought to be 
provided by the State with the comforts of his religion. Not only 
the happiness and virtue, but the discipline also of the troops 
would, he was satisfied, be promoted by such a course. The 
government of India had always acted upon the same view, but he 
would make it his duty to make a representation to the Court of 
Directors in order that it might be, if found necessary, more fullj 
acted upon. 



2 



n 



FLOGGING ON THE SABBATH— THE EARL OF CARD! 

GAN.* 

APRIL 20, 1841. 

[Mr. Humk, 6ooing the Secretary-at-War in his place, begged to r.sV rin: 
whether the statements which had appeared in the public papers were cor- 
rect, that a soldier of the 11th Hussars had been flogged on Sunday, the 
11th inst., and whether there were any regulation a at the Horse-guards 
with respect to military punishments on that day \\ 

Mr. Macaulay replied, that, although the discipline of the army 
was not immediately connected with his department, yet, as 
he might be supposed to be more connected with the army from 
the office which he held than other Members of her Majesty's 
Government, he had felt it to be his duty, in anticipation of any 
questions being put to him, to obtain such information as would 
enable him to give an answer. With respect to this case, the facts 
were not precisely as they had been stated in the public prints. It 
was not the case that the punishment had been inflicted on the 
soldier under such circumstances as if it were a continuance of 
divine service. It was not the case that the troops were kept in 
the place where divine worship was performed, for the purpose of 
seeing this punishment inflicted, nor was it the case that the sol- 
diers of another regiment, which attended divine worship at the 
same place, were detained for this purpose. He was assured that 
the soldiers of the 11th regiment were marched out of the riding 
school, and the other regiment was marched to its quarters. The 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. Ivii. p. 956-58. 



( 2§ THE KARL OF CARDIGAN. 

former regiment was then inspected for about half-an-hour, and 
then marched back to the riding-school, where the punishment was 
inflicted. On the ground of a want of humanity, he believed that 
no one could throw a charge on the officer commanding this regi- 
ment. As long as they retained corporal punishment for the pre- 
servation of the discipline of the army, the offence of which the 
soldier who underwent the punishment was guilty, was one for 
which it should be inflicted. Whatever other imputations there 
miarkfc be cast on Lord Cardigan, a disposition for the infliction of 
c'-poal punishment was not one which could justly be thrown on 
him. From Inquiries which he had made, he had found that since 
'1B39. up to the recent case, there was not an instance of the inflic- 
tion of corporal punishment in this regiment. The charge, how- 
ever, for which he was justly liable to public censure, was the im- 
mediate infliction of punishment on a Sunday after divine service. 
Such a proceeding was clearly contrary to the religious feelings and 
habits of the people of this country, and could not be reconciled 
with either good sense or good feeling. Under such circumstances, 
he (Mr. Macau lay) never could appear as the advocate of such pro- 
ceedings. The case, however, was not peculiar, as similar instances 
had occurred in the army, as well as in the other branches of the 
service ; but all the officers he had consulted on the subject, dis- 
tinctly stated that such a proceeding could only be justified under 
circumstances of extreme exigency. Such notice, however, had 
been taken of this proceeding, and such further notice would be 
taken, as to render it impossible that a recurrence of it could take 
v>lace. 



20 



April 22, 1841 * 

[Mr. Hawks gave notice, that to-morrow he should move for a return of 
the number of instances of corporal punishment which had been inflicted 
on a Sunday in the British Army during the last ten years. He begged to 
ask the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary -at- War whether there had been 
any infliction of corporal punishment under circumstances similar to those 
that had taken place in the recent punishment of a soldier of the 11th Hus- 
sars, under the command of the Earl of Cardigan.] 

Mr. Macaulay said, lie was much obliged to his lion. Friend for 
asking this question, and for giving him an opportunity of setting 
light a misunderstanding with regard to what lie stated on a pre- 
vious niffht. It had been stated that he had said that there were 
precedents for the conduct followed — he must say most improperly 
and culpably — by Lord Cardigan, in flogging a soldier on a Sun- 
day. What he had stated was this, that having inquired of offi- 
cers of great standing and experience in the service, he had learned 
from them that there were precedents of punishments having been 
inflicted on a Sunday, but not precedents which bore out the con- 
duct of Lord Cardigan, because they had stated that such punish- 
ments were never justifiably inflicted except in cases of military 
exigency, and on march, when there was no choice. But the Sun- 
d.iv punishments did not bear out the conduct of Lord Cardigan, 
and he had distinctly stated that the punishment in the particular 
case alluded to, might, without the smallest inconvenience, have 
been postponed till next day. This information would probably 
meet the views of his hon. Friend. He was not aware that such a 

* Hansard. 3d Series, vol. lvii. n, 911-72. 



30 Ttifi EARL OS CAR&tOAK. 

return would afford an instance of a similar kind ; and his own 
belief was, that for the last ten years there were no instances of 
punishments having been inflicted on a Sunday except in cases of 
great disorder occurring on a march or other exigency. 



31 



MAY 13, 18 41. 

On the motion of Mr. Muutz : 

"That a humble Address be presented to her Majesty praying her 
Majesty to institute an inquiry into the conduct of the right hon. the Earl 
of Cardigan, during his command of the Eleventh Hussars, with the view 
of ascertaining how far such conduct has rendered him unfit to remaiu in 
her Majesty's service." 

He hoped to be able, in a few minutes, to state to the House 
sufficient grounds for dissenting from the motion of the hon. Mem- 
ber. His first objection was a very obvious one. It was a consti- 
tutional objection. He believed that the hon. Gentleman himself 
would admit, that while there was no prerogative of the Crown 
which that House was not entitled to offer its advice upon, yet it 
was necessary that, in offering advice on such points, it should be 
guided by a very sound discretion. Indeed, none but the most 
imperious reasons, in the most extreme cases, could warrant such 
interference with the royal prerogative ; and he believed that, 
above all other prerogatives, in all well-organized states, the con- 
trol of the army, and the awarding of rewards and punishments to 
military men, were considered most exclusively to belong to the 
supreme executive authority ; and that such matters ought not tc 
be submitted to large popular assemblies of men, who were too apt 
to be influenced by party and factious impulse. He did not deny, 
however, that there might be extreme cases in which such inter- 
ference would be prudent and proper ; but he did not think that 
the present was a case of that kind. He thought that her Majesty's 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. lviii p. 339-43. 



32 THE EAKL .1 CARDIGAN. 

Government ought not to coi u*oi her Majesty to follow the advice 
of the lion. Member in the present case, whether that advice were 
concurred in by Parliament or not. With respect to the particular 
occurrence to which the hon. Member had referred, he had not 
hesitated, on a former occasion, to express the opinion he enter- 
tained of the conduct of the noble Earl on that occasion ; but he 
must say, that whatever might be the faults of the noble Earl, lie 
considered him as one of the most unfortunate men of the present 
time. Into the merits and demerits of the noble Earl's conduct, 
however, he would not go at present, but, viewing that conduct 
in whatever light it might deserve, he still said, that the present 
motion was highly objectionable, because, in all matters of this 
kind, they should be guided by general rules ; they should beware 
how they hasten to take advantage of the unpopularity of an 
individual, to introduce a precedent which, if once established, 
would lead to the most fatal effects to the whole of our military 
system, and work a great injustice to all officers in her Majesty's 
service. What was the case of officers in the army ? They bought 
their commissions at a high price, the interest of which would be 
very nearly equal to the pay they received ; they devoted the best 
years of their lives to the service, and were liable to be sent to all, and 
even to the most unhealthy parts of the globe, where their health, 
and sometimes their lives, fell a sacrifice. Now was it to be 
expected that men of spirit and honour would consent to enter 
this service, if they had not, at least, some degree of security of 
the permanence of their situations ? Certainly one of those secu- 
rities was, that no officer should be deprived of his commission, 
except by sentence of a court-martial. There might certainly be 
exceptions ; as, for instance, where an officer had done something 
which was cognizable by a court-martial, but there were strong 
reasons why a proceeding of that sort should not be adopted. B it 
to charge an officer by an ex post facto proceeding, without a 
coil} t- martial, r,nd of a nature not cognizable by virtue of the 



THE EARL OF CARDIGAN. 33 

Mutiny Act, would lead to a great injustice, and a most fatal 
uncertainty in our whole military system. If some part of the 
naiements which had been made were true; if the fact of the 
Earl of Cardigan having given the lie to one of the oftcers at the 
head of his regiment, had been represented to the proper military 
authorities, notice would have been immediately taken of it. He 
could only say that he neve- heard the smallest whisper of such a 
practice. With regard to the unhappy event of the flogging on 
the Sunday, he believed that no person acquainted with the military 
law of this country would be of opinion that that was an act which, 
however flagrant it might be considered, as a breach of decorum, a 
court-martial would condemn as a breach of military law. That 
opinion rested on the authority of Lord Hill, the Adjutant-General, 
and the Duke of Wellington, who said that, however great the 
indecorum might he of an act not included in the Articles of War, 
or the Mutiny Act, or the regulations of the army, it must be 
looked on as a casus omissus, which could only subject an officer 
to a reprimand by genera! order, and thus be raised to an offence 
which, in future, would make the party guilty of it liable te court 
martial. As to the proposition of the hon. Gentleman, for erectino 
that House into a penal court -f inquiry, he mus. props' against 
it as a spec::- of tribunal, dangerous and revolutionary, it would 
make that House, which 1 x\ not the power to administer an oath 
to witnesses, or punish them if they prevaricated, a court for pass- 
ing a sentence, which might ruin a po-:r man in the shape of a 
pecuniary fine, or in attaching a stigma to his name almost worse 
than death itself. With regard to the oart which he felt it his duty 
t<> take on this question, he defieo my Gentleman to imagine any 
..lotivj which he could have beyond a regard to the performance 
of the duties of his office, and a regard for the interests of the ser- 
vice, m speaking as he had done in behalf of a man with whom lie 
Lac. never had the slightest personal communication, whom he chV] 
aot kttsw by sight, and with regard to whom everything that ~; 

2* 



34 THE EARL OF CARDIGAN. 

did know-apart from the unfortunate circumstances with which 
his name had been mixed up-led him to think he was a decided 
opponent of the Government of which he was a Member, and of 
the party tc which he was attached. 



JEWS' DECLARATION BILL .• 

MARCH 31, 1841. 

Amidst cries of "Divide," he said he could make allowance fo 
hon. Gentlemen, and he would detain the House for a very littl 
while indeed. He would confine himself to a few words upon 
remark made hy his hon. Friend, and repeated by the hon. Gen 
tleman who seconded the amendment. Those hon. Gentlemen hai 
treated the bill in a very improper manner. They had discussed i 
as if it would relieve the Jews from all civil disabilities whatevei 
and would render them eligible to sit in Parliament. The bill ha< 
no such object. It was true that his noble Friend (Lord J. Russell 
had said, that they ought to be admitted to seats in Parliament 
and he (Mr. Macaulay) was of the same opinion. But that wa 
not the question at present. This was a measure for admitting 
them to civil and municipal offices, and his hon. Friend opposed it 
not because he gave any reasons for thinking Jews incompetent t< 
till such offices, but because he thought them not competent to ac 
in the Legislature. He had listened with great attention to th< 
speech of the hon. Gentleman, and he was quite unable to discove 
any argument therein against the removal of these Jewish disa 
bilities which might not be urged with equal force against a larg< 
proportion of the Members who, at that moment, had seats in tin 
House. His hon. Friend alluded to the prayers which were offeree 
up in that House, and he asked, could Jews join in them ? Bu 
that was a question which would apply to many Gentlemen ahead) 

•Hansard, 3d Series, vol. lvii. p. 801-64. 



38 JEWS* DECLARATION tJltL. 

in that House. There was one Gentleman, a member of a highly 
respectable sect, which considered such a form of prayer to be irre- 
ligious. His hon. Friend said, that the prayer asked for the pro- 
motion of true religion. But there was as much difference 
already in the House on the subject of true religion, as there was 
between the Jew and the Christian. The Roman Catholic differed 
from the Protestant, and the Unitarian differed from the Trinitarian, 
as to what was the true religion. Whichever of them was right, 
there must be a great deal of false religion in the House of Com- 
mons. But it was not the object of the bill to introduce the Jews 
to Parliament. He called on every Gentleman who thought the 
Jews competent to discharge the duties of municipal officers to vote 
for this bill, without being deterred by an apprehension, that if he 
conceded now what was right and just, he might next year be 
asked for something which he considered improper. Political 
measures were not connected together by so logical a sequence as 
to make it essential that some further measure must follow this. 
The Iron. Member had started a special ground of apprehension, as 
he conceived it. He said, that so much attention having of late 
years been paid to religious questions in that House, and religious 
disputes continuing to form so prominent a feature in Parliamentary 
discussions, it would be peculiarly wrong to admit Jews into the 
House to decide upon matters of such vital interest and importance 
to the Christian community. In the first place, let him repeat it 
once more, this was not a bill for admitting Jews to the House of 
Commons ; and, in the second place, even if it were, it was quite 
impossible, that any Jewish Members of the House could differ 
more widely from the Christians, upon religious questions, as they 
came before the House, than the Christian Members did among 
one another. Take tin- Scottish Church question, for instance; 
the Jews were by no means a proselytizing nation, and the utmost 
they would do, if they interfered and took ever so warm a part, 
would be perhaps to aboiish the present Scottish Established 



Jews' declaration bill. 



Church, and iritrok uce the voluntary system ; and for that matter 
he (Mr. Ma mlav) thought he could find forty Christian Members 
of the House who would go quite as far. He must say, that he 
considered it in the highest degree disgraceful to humanity- 
disgraceful to a civilized community, to treat or speak of the Jews 
in the manner which had been exhibited on the occasions on which 
this question had been discussed. Much as he condemned and 
regretted the conduct of the Church to the Dissenters, he did noi 
see that this bore any comparison with the hardships to whk< tfvo 
Jews had been subjected. The hon. Member said, the Jew- 
laboured under no practical grievance, and spoke of their exclusion 
from office as nothing to be complained of. That incapacity to 
hold office which among the other nations was made part of the 
punishment of crime, was, according to the hon. Gentleman's sin- 
gular theory, no ground for complaint, no grievance, no oppression, 
when put into effect against the Jewish nation. What would the 
hon. Gentleman think if he had been declared incapable of office I 
or if, to take his own view of the case in hand, he had been 
excluded from that House of Commons, of which he was so greal 
an ornament, simply because he had happened to differ in religious 
opinion from the established creed of the country? Before such i 
principle was adopted some strong public necessity should b< 
shown. Carry out the principle to its legitimate extent, and whai 
would it lead to ? Why, in the lapse of time you would be justi 
tied in whipping and burning men for holding certain opinions 01 
religious subjects at variance with what had been considered b) 
many to be the test of what was right on the question. Anothe 
proposition was advanced, equally extraordinary and objectionable 
with the other, that there were so very few of the Jews that it di( 
not much matter whether they had a grievance or not. A mag 
nanimous proposition truly ! The Roman Catholics of Ireland 
because they were millions, and the Protestant Dissenters o 
England, because they, too, were some millions, had, it seemed. 



.'}8 JEWS DECLARATION BILL. 

claim to political liberty, and a claim which, when they insisted 
upon it, the lhike of Wellington, with all his nerve and courage, 
had not thought it advisable further to oppose. But the Jews, 
truly, because they were not millions — because there was no fear 
of a state rebellion in Petticoat-lane or DukeVplaee — were tc 
suffer their grievances in silence. We need not dread formidable 
meetings like those in the Corn Exchange, if we withheld from 
them their rights, and therefore it was said they should be with- 
held. This argument would be equally strong against the Quakers, 
The number of Quakers was smaller than that of the Jews, and 
on what principle did they admit the one and exclude the other 1 
It must be remembered also, that this argument told both ways 
If on the one hand serious injury to the State was not to be appre- 
hended from the hostility of the Jewish population, on the othei 
hand, there was no reason to apprehend their predominance among 
the people in such a manner as to diminish the number of Chris- 
tians, whether they belonged to the Established Church, or to any 
body of Dissenters. They were a small sect, and not a proselyting 
one, and therefore, if these circumstances were urged to show there 
would be no danger in refusing their claims, it might also be used 
to show, that there would be no clanger in granting them. The 
House of Commons, it had been observed by his hon. Friend, used 
to exercise functions much more important than now belonged tc 
them. They were formerly called upon to make articles and draw- 
up creeds, and modes of worship, duties which it was not likely 
they would be again called upon to execute. For his own part, he 
had of late seen so much proof how little articles and forms were 
able to bind the ingenuity of casuists, that he should be sorry to 
see the House again occupied in framing such cobwebs. He could 
only wish for that which would put an end to this bill and all such 
bills — enlightened toleration ; but if learned persons elsewhere 
would teach the Jews some of their own ingenuity, there could not 
tfcea be the slightest doubt but that, as those ingenious person^ 



JEWs' declaration BIll. 39 

swallowed confession and absolution, so these tests might also be 
swallowed bv the Jews without the slightest hesitation. He would 
venture to say, that a better gloss could be found for a Jewish 
declaration than other glosses which lie had seen, and that not 
merely for the purpose of obtaining civil offices, but in order to 
hold the faith of Rome with the endowments of the English 
Church. He regretted, that the hon. Gentleman who had seconded 
the motion, had introduced some topics which might, in his 
opinion, have better been omitted. The hon. Gentleman had 
Alluded to the great national crime committed bv the Jewis.li 
people more than eighteen hundred years ago; but he did not 
think that House was a proper place in which to make such an 
allusion. He should at all events say, that, from that event, the 
most solemn which man could contemplate, there was one lesson to 
be derived which should not be forgotten. They should remember, 
that the greatest crime ever committed upon earth was committed 
by men who knew r not what they did under the influence ot 
religious intolerance. For his own part he should say, that or 
every occasion in which an attempt was made in that House tc 
take away any civil disability imposed upon men in consequence 
of their religious opinions, it should receive his most strenuous 
support. 



40 



THE SUGAR DUTIES * 

MAY 11, 1841. 

Unwilling as I am to stand in the way of my lion. Frie'id (Mr, 
Gisborne), who has the right in point of strict regularity to addres« 
the House, the House will feel that it would be difficult for me 
alter what has been said in this debate, not to take, if possible, the 
first opportunity of offering* myself to your attention. It happened 
that 1 w r as not in my place last night. Had I been here, although 
at that hour, and in the state of the House, I should have had 
some difficulty in commanding attention, I should, notwithstanding, 
have trusted that for the very few minutes I felt it necessary to 
offer myself, I should have experienced that courtesy which in the 
midst of the most exciting* political discussion an assembly of Eng- 
lish gentlemen were ever ready to afford to any person whose per- 
sonal feelings may be naturally excited. I am glad, however, that 
it was otherwise. I am glad that until this morning I was unac- 
quainted with some part of the debate which occurred last night. 
The consequence is, that I come here without, I trust, any feeling 
of irritation. I will not say, that the hon. Member for Newark, 
whom I will still call my hon. Friend, could have intended to be 
pt-r-^onally offensive to one from whom he never received any persona 
provocation. 1 am satisfied of the contrary ; and the more so as 
some part of the expressions imputed to the hon. Gentleman wer 
of a nature so gratifying to my feelings, that they more than com 
pensated for the pain which was given by a censure which was not 
deserved. Avoiding, therefore, any irritating expression of my 

* Hans-inl, ?.tl Series, vol. Iviii. p. 188-195. 



St' OAR DUTIES. 41 

feelings, avoiding any recrimination or retort, I shall request the 
attention of the House for a very few minutes to an explanation of 
the part which I mean to take in the decision of the question 
before it. I do not intend to touch upon the general principles 
involved in this debate. I willingly leave them to rest on the 
luminous and eloquent exposition of my noble Friend (Lord J. 
Russell) to which I feel it would be difficult to add anything. The 
questions of detail 1 with equal pleasure leave to my right hon. 
Friends the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the President of the 
Board of Trade, and to other Gentlemen whose intimate know- 
ledge of the commercial and manufacturing interests of the coun- 
try enables them to speak with an authority and ability to which I 
cannot pretend. I only offer myself to a point on this question 
with regard to which it is impossible for me to continue silent. I 
shall endeavour to state, as soberly and as temperately as I can, 
those reasons which may lead a person who has, according to his 
situation and the measure of his abilitv, made exertions and sacri- 
iices to remove from our laws the stain of slavery — a person who 
is sensible of the peculiar responsibility which lies on him for exer- 
tions and sacrifices, not his own, on this great question — honestly 
and properly to support the measure of her Majesty's Government. 
My hon. Friend (Mr. Gladstone), if I rightly understand him, im- 
putes to me, and to those who take the same view of this motion, 
some dereliction of principle. Nay, he speaks of our laxity of 
principle, and a certain infatuation amounting to a judicial blind- 
ness, which marked the conduct of those entertaining the same 
opinions as I do with regard to slavery, in giving their adhesion to 
the views of the Government. What is this principle which we 
have lost sight of? I am utterly at a loss to discover any that we 
have violated. I have listened to speeches in this House: I have 
read the* newspapers : I have looked at the resolution of the noble 
Lord (Lord Sandon) for the purpose of lighting upon the great 
principle of humanity and justice which we have bee^ accused of 



4§ StJGAft DtTTiEs. 

violating ; and I have examined all these sources in vain. As to 
the resolution which has been laid before the House, I do not com- 
plain of it. I do not say, that it is not a justifiable mode of poli- 
tical warfare ; but with any statement of a moral principle, it is 
clearly not chargeable. It, on the contrary, appears to me to be 
a skilfully contrived party motion, the object of which is to per- 
plex and dispossess the advisers of the Crown, without committing 
their successors. I see nothing in that motion which, if it be 
carried, can impede the success of that principle of free trade which 
I devoutly hope may be ultimately sanctioned, or which can pre- 
vent those now opposed to such large and enlightened views com- 
ing down on some future occasion to the House with exactly tho 
same proposition as that submitted by her Majesty's Government. 
I have read, as I have said, controversial writings — I have looked 
into debates, and still I try in vain to find out the great moral 
principle which we are accused of violating. Is it intended to set 
up as a law of morality that we ought not to take slave-grown 
produce ? Clearly not. That we may use the slave-grown cotton 
of the United States, and slave-grown coffee and tobacco, is not 
contested. And with regard to sugar itself, that which is the pro- 
duct not only of slaves, but of the slave trade, is not found to be 
interdicted in large portions of the British empire. We do not 
deny its use to the Canadians or to the people of the Cape of 
Good Hope — nay, we do not deny it to the inhabitants of thes« 
very West-Indian islands. What, then, is this moral principle — 
this great general law of humanity and justice, which permits a 
man to wear slave-grown cotton on his feet, and not taste slave- 
grown sugar in his tea —which permits him to smoke slave-grown 
tobacco, and denies him a palatable beverage to drink with it — 
rather, which permits him the enjoyment of a cup of slave-grown 
coffee, but does not allow him to sweeten it with slave-grown sugar. 
Nay, to make the absurdity more complete, which permits slave- 
grown sugar to be imported into Newfoundland and Barbadoes, 



SUGAR DUTIES. 43 

and declares it shall not be admitted into Yorkshire and Lanca 
shire. I can perfectly understand that hon. Gentlemen cpposiu 
may have reasons of good weight why they should tolerate one 
and not the other ; but I altogether deny they can rest the dis 
tinetion on any great general law ot morality. And I must say, 
when I contemplete the whole case got up on the opposite side, it 
seems to me that the distinction which has been drawn partakes 
very much less of moral feeling than of party interests. As to my 
conduct, and that of those who think with me, I shall perhaps res* 
defend it by stating the considerations which weighed with my 
own mind in taking the course on which I have decided. Suppose 
any philanthropist were persuaded himself of the justness of the 
step, and called on us to exclude the cotton of the United States : 
suppose he were to draw — and I fear he might draw with great 
truth — a very melancholy picture of the moral, social, and physi- 
cal evils connected with the system of slavery in the southern 
parts of the United States. Suppose he were to ask whether we 
could consent to receive three or four million pounds of cotton 
annually, every ounce of which was the produce of slave labour, 
and then call on the House to pass a law interdicting by a direc* 
prohibition, or by a duty so high as to amount to a direct prohi- 
bition (which is the case of the foreign sugar), the importation of 
cotton from such a quarter — the right hon. Member for Tamworth, 
the hon. Member for Newark, and the right hon. Member for the 
Tower Hamlets, would, with one voice, pronounce such a propo- 
sition inadmissible. The reasons they would give for coming to 
such a determination, I am sensible I could give but very imper- 
fectly ; but 1 think I can state the views which, in such a case, 
would influence my own vote, and then I shall leave it to the con* 
sideration of the House to say whether these reasons do not to a 
great extent apply to the present case. I should say, if such a 
proposition were brought on, " I admit that slavery is a great and 
fearful evil ; I admit that in all parts of the world which are within 



44 SUGAR DUTIES. 

the sphere of our power we lie under a moral obligation to abolish 
it. I admit that no cost, however great, should stand in the way 
of what is so clear a dutv as it ought in that case to be considered : 
but the case of slavery within the control of our own power, and 
that of slavery in a foreign country, present such distinct features 
that they ought to be treated on perfectly different principles." 
We have not the sovereign power of the united legislature of the 
States. We cannot say to the slave owners of Georgia, as we did 
to those of Antigua, "here is money to reimburse your loss; set 
your slaves at liberty, admit them to the enjoyment of freedom 
and to the exercise of equal rights with yourselves." We can exer- 
cise no such direct control ; we can only influence such parties by 
some indirect means. Some of these it is clearly our duty to use. 
Whatever the persuasion, the discussion, the moral power, the 
arguments, and the practice which one great nation can effect with 
another, we are bound to resort to. I regard with the highest 
approbation those efforts which have been made for the purpose 
of putting down the slave trade, through means of English cruisers, 
and of making treaties with foreign nations with the object of 
putting down that trade ; but if we are called on to prohibit al.' 
commercial intercourse between countries employing slave-labour 
and our own, if we are called on to prohibit the free admission of 
their produce into our ports, the question presents itself in a very 
different aspect. I am here charged, in the first place, with pro- 
viding for the happiness of our own people. It is committed in a 
very different form from that by which the people of other coun- 
tries are recommended to mv care. All men have certain claims 
on my sympathy, but all have not equal claims. I maintain if the 
state neglects that which is its proper and legitimate duty, a risk 
is run that both the functions which legitimately belong to it, and 
those which it unnecessarily usurps, will be ill perfotmed. I see 
in this country a great manufacturing population, drawing the 
materials of manufacture from a limited market, I see a greaj 



SUGAR DUTIES. 45 

Cotton trade carried on, which furnishes nearly two millions of peo- 
ple with food, clothes, and filing, and I say, that if you shut out 
slave-grown cotton, you would proudce a mass of misery amongst 
tlie people whom Providence has committed to your charge fright- 
ful to contemplate ; you would introduce desolation into your 
richly flourishing manufacturing districts; you would reduce hun- 
dreds on hundreds to beggary and destitution ; you would ri.^k 
the stability of your institutions— and when you had done all this, 
you would have great reason to doubt whether you conferred any 
great benefits on the particular class for whom you made such 
sacrifices. You would merely transfer the present trade which 
you carry on to your rivals. You would make Germany a War- 
wickshire, Leipsic another Manchester, and without elevating one 
-lave in the United States to the position of a freeman, you would 
bring hundreds of thousands of your own industrious artizans to 
beggary. If any person were to come forward with such a propo- 
sition, for the exclusion of slave-grown cotton, I think I should be 
jrtstitied in opposing it on the grounds I have stated ; and it 
appears to me, that this motion should be judged of, though not 
ijiiite to the same extent, on the same principle. The question 
must be looked at as one of expediency. To the best of my power 
I have fairly weighed the effect likely to be produced to the peo- 
ple of England, by depriving them of the market of Brazils, which 
1 firmly believe will be, to a great extent, if not altogether, shut 
out by the continuauce of your present commercial law. I have 
endeavoured to consider what effects will be produced in extinguish- 
ing the Brazilian slave-trade by the influence which Great Britain 
would necessarily acquire, if she opened her markets to the Brazi- 
lians. 1 have attempted to t-ov- rot . t | lp degree of unhappiness, 
which could possibly be removed from the Brazilians, , v . - 
a commercial system of restriction, with the degree of unhappiness 
inflicted on a people more immediately placed under our charge, 
by a perseverance in such a course of policy. After making this 



46 SUGAR DUTFES. 

comparison it is my deliberate opinion that it is our duty to adopt 
a proposition similar to that of her Majesty's Government. 1 really 
cannot conceive how any lion. Gentleman who is content to reeeivy 
slave-grown cotton can pronounce a departure from principle tc 
have taken place in the conduct of others, because calculations as 
to the effects of a change in our present system by one party differ 
from the views of the other. Nor can I see any inconsistency in 
giving twenty millions for the abolition of a great moral and social 
evil which we were o-uiltv of inflicting, which was under our con- 
trol, and which oppressed our fellow-subjects, the negroes of the 
Indjes ; and saying we will not pay what I verily believe will be 
a great deal more than twenty millions, for the purpose of avert- 
ing what I admit to be a horrible evil, but for which we are not 
responsible, over which we have no direct control, which we cannot 
abolish, and which I very much doubt whether we should, by 
taking such a course, at all diminish. It has been said, that 
foreign nations will look with astonishment at the inconsistency dis- 
played by parties on this question. I do believe that foreigners will 
be surprised when they look into this question, and see the different 
conduct pursued by those when a great monopoly was connected 
with the continuance of slavery in our dominions, and the scruples 
now raised concerning it, when carried on in a foreign country. 
And if foreigners carry their curiosity far enough, and, looking 
into the public lives of those who have come forward on this occa- 
sion, compare the present division with those that took place 
formerly, and particularly in 1823, they may perhaps find some 
reason to be astonished that precisely the same persons who strug- 
gled most vehemently to uphold the great evil for which we were 
directly resoonsihlp wA. ..~ui~u u niiii 0llr g rS £ a^ u i v £ rem0 ve, 
were those who maintained that no sacrifices were too great for the 
extinction of an evil which we did not produce, im \ which we 
were in no way directly bound to v mQ dy t Uf ptywt \w been 

ifily k» rififj tftty fiff$ |m nu mmwy mm^tem m whim 



StlOAR DUTIES. 47 

to extirpate slavery within the British Empire, and, at the same 
time, supporting the proposition which lias been laid on the Tal-U 
of t lie House. As to the general question, I shall only say, that a 
great financial and commercial crisis appears to me to have arrived 
•at the same time. For the support of the public faith, and for the 
safety and dignity of the State, the wants of the revenue must bf 
supplied. For the security of our manufactures, and to protect 
them against rivalry, our great towns have cried out for the 
removal of commercial restrictions. It so happens thai her Ma- 
jesty's Government have the power by one measure f) moo tut; 
revenue, and to extend our commerce ; to make good the deficit 
in our supplies, not by making the people poor, but, as I conscien- 
tiously believe, by making them rich. 1 utterly deny, and I can 
speak with confidence of my own feelings and opinions, that these 
measures have been thrown on the Table of the Uouse in a fit of 
random despair. I deny that I despaired of seeiii^ i*i£ t :."*■>- part 
».»f them carried. We have miscalculated — that is u::q'aesiio.L <*i le. 
We well knew in the present state of parties, that the strength of 
the Government alone was utterly incapable of carrying them. But, 
even after the evening on which the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
made his statement, and down even to the moment when the 
noble Member for Liverpool laid his motion on the Table, T had 
hopes that there were persons on the other side, who from a patri- 
otic feeling, from a just consideration of the necessities of the State, 
would — as, to do them justice, they had done on many other occa- 
sions — have come forward, and without relaxing their general oppo- 
sition to the Government, have assisted that Government in meet- 
ing the difficulties which pressed on the country. Their support 
would undoubtedly have enabled the Government to carry the 
material parts of the Budget, including that now under debate. 
These calculations have turned out to be unfounded. But the seed 
we have sown is not lost. I feel a firm conviction that at no dis- 
tant period these great reforms we have proposed in our coramer- 



4B Biiakt totftfiS. 

cial system will become the law of the land. I don't expect, when 
that time comes, we shall occupy these benches, but whenever it 
arrives, I shall not deny my adhesion to the principles of that great 
party to which I am unalterably attached. It is not the first time 
in the history of that party", that they yielded the harvest to 
those who did not bear the burden and heat of the day. It is not 
the first time they have been eager supporters of a measure which 
they believed likely to promote the public good, whatever were 
the motives, or however tardy the admission in its favour of the 
Dart} w.jieti brought it forward. 



49 



CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY * 

may 27, 1841. 

He felt called upon, in the first instance, to congratulate the right 
lion. Gentleman [Sir R. Peel] on the support which he had just re- 
ceived to his motion by the lion. Gentleman who had just sat down 
[Mr. Walter], who stated that he should vote for it, not on allegations 
previously stated on the opposite side, but on grounds completely 
contradictory to any which had been urged by the right lion. 
Baronet. The lion. Member said, that the principles on which he 
was prepared to vote for the motion, and to withhold his confi- 
dence from the Government, rested, in the first instance, on the 
Government's support of the question of privilege last year, and in 
defence of which the right lion. Baronet distinguished himself more 
than any other Member of the House ; and, secondly, on theii 
introducing and continuing the New Poor-law Bill, of which mea- 
sure the right lion. Baronet, much to his honour, was a most strong 
and zealous supporter. He did not rise for the purpose of dwell- 
ing on these discrepancies, but for the purpose of following and 
answering some particular parts of the right hon. Baronet's speech, 
to whicli hitherto no allusion had been made by hon. Gentlemen 
on his side of the House. He would endeavour to compress what 
he had to say into as narrow limits as possible. He must, then, at 
once express some little surprise at the form of the present motion. 
If the right hon. Baronet had chosen to assert the principle that 
the present Government had not the confidence of the House of 

* H:-msp.r<1, 3d Series, vol. lviii. p. 877-883. 
VOL. II. 3 



66 CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 

Commons, there might be some argument for his motion ; but 
then he did not adduce an argument for the great constitutional 
question which was lying behind the first assertion in his resolu- 
tion. As far as he had observed the conduct of the right hon. 
Baronet, it appeared to him that he was generally against the 
assertion of any general principle which applied not only to any 
particular question, but to any other case that might arise. But 
in this resolution — this judicial resolution — he departed from his 
usual course, for he thought fit to lay down a general principle as 
to what was in conformity with the spirit of the constitution. He 
believed that it was no light matter for that House to pledge itself 
on its journals that one or the other course was in conformity with 
the spirit of the constitution. It was a serious matter for that 
House to come to any such resolution ; for if any particular men 
acted upon the spirit of it the greatest inconvenience might ensue. 
He said this with confidence ; for, if in any pressing emergency, or 
under circumstances of difficulty, the spirit of the constitution was 
violated and departed from by any public men, and if the House 
felt justified in sanctioning the proceeding, then they must deter- 
mine that the opinion of that House, as contained in the resolution, 
was null and void. If, therefore, the House agreed to a resolution 
proposed by the right hon. Baronet, that the present Administra- 
tion did not possess nor deserve the confidence of the House of 
Commons, and that, therefore, it should be instantly removed, he 
could understand and appreciate the course of proceeding; but 
then the House would not fall into the error which the right hon. 
Baronet had done, in laying down what he believed to be nothing 
more nor less than a political dogma. The truth was, that the 
right hon. Baronet had mixed up the major part of 'his proposition 
with the minor. The major part of the proposition was, that her 
Majesty's Ministers do not sufficiently possess the confidence of the 
House of Commons to enable them to carry through the House 
nieasures which they deem of essential importance to the public 



CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 51 

welfare, ami the minor portion of the proposition was, that their 
continuance in office, under such circumstances, was at variance 
with the spirit of the constitution. On the latter point, he would 
join issue with the right hon. Baronet, and he thought that he had 
good and conclusive ground for asserting that the House should 
not agree to this part of the resolution. But, first of all, with 
respect to the declaratory part, lie thought that it was in the 
highest degree against the spirit of the constitution to sanction 
such a proposition. He could readily believe a state of things 
when such conduct as was impugned in this resolution was inevita- 
ble — when a state of things might arise from which there was no 
other possibility of escape — when a state of things might occur in 
the country which rendered the proceeding necessary — and he 
believed that almost at the present moment there was such a state 
of things in this country as to render any other course, if not im- 
possible, a matter of the greatest difficulty. He believed that the 
right hon. Gentleman's proposition might bo met with a rcductio 
ad abaurdum. The proposition of the right hon. Gentleman, he 
contended, must, in certain states of parties, be violated bv all 
governments. Take a plain and simple deduction from what had 
occurred, and was likely to occur again. There were 658 Mem- 
bers of that House. What security was there in the constitution 
of the country against their bringing forward propositions which 
the House would not support by a large majority ? For instance, 
on any question, there might be 320 strong and zealous Tories 
or Conservatives on the one side, and 320 strong and zealous 
Reformers, or supporters of the present Government, on the other 
— and suppose, also, that there were seventeen or eighteen Gentle- 
men who objected to the strong opinions of either party, and were 
adyerse to adopt either of the extreme opinions that might be pro 
posed. Under these circumstances, in wjiat manner would the 
right hou, Gentleman leoure u majority ? And under such a state 
$>f tiling if this resolution WM to be adopted and acicd upon by 



52 CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 

the House, how would the Government be carried on 1 Was this 
he would ask, an impossible, nay, an improbable state of things? 
Take in the present Parliament the question of the Irish registra- 
tion of voters. This was a question of the greatest importance, 
and involved the most momentous considerations. Whatever differ- 
ences of opinion were involved on the subject, both sides, he was 
sure, would at once admit, that it was a matter of very great 
importance, as it was a question, which, to a certain extent, involved 
the constitution of that House, and on the principle on which it 
was determined depended the return of nearly one sixth of the 
Members of that House. The House was divided into two great 
parties on this subject, and they very nearly balanced each other. 
The one party had at its head the noble Lord, the Member for 
North Lancashire, the other supported the views of her Majesty's 
Ministers on this subject. The opinion also entertained by the 
opposite parties as to the measures of their opponents was strong 
in the extreme. The noble Lord and his Friends entertained the 
opinion, that the adoption of the proposition of the Government, 
with respect to the Irish constituency, would be swamping the pre- 
sent bond fide constituency in that country, and that the addition 
proposed to it by the Government was an approach to the adop- 
tion of universal suffrage. On the other hand, many Members on 
that (the Ministerial) side of the House regarded the measure of 
the noble Lord on this subject as little better than proposals for the 
general disfranchisement, and for almost the annihilation of the 
body of voters in Ireland which existed at the present moment. 
The difference of opinion was here fundamental and undeniable. 
Between these two great parties, however, there was a small body 
of Members' who entertained the extreme opinions of neither; thits 
body, although small in numbers, was most respectable for its 
talents, but by their votes and influence were enabled to prevent 
either party succeeding in its measures. What were the circum- 
stances that had arisen during the contests on this subject ? J>as; 



CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 5S 

year the noble Lord proposed his hill, and it was opposed, but 
opposed in vain, by the Government, lie succeeded in getting it 
into committee, but when there, almost on the first division, the 
noble Lord was defeated in a clause which he considered the most 
essential part of his bill. The noble Lord was defeated on a part 
of his bill, which he considered the great blemish of it, and it was 
clear to his mind, that if the noble Lord had not abandoned it, he 
would have had no chance of carrying it during the present year ; 
the plan of the Government had been entertained by the House on 
its second reading, but on going into committee, it was defeated on 
one of its essential principles, and was, therefore, abandoned, and 
thus the matter at present stood, and neither party could succeed 
in carrying its measures. Might not similar difficulties and the 
same proceeding arise on other questions of importance, and above 
all on those of a fiscal character ? for what finance question could 
be proposed which did not affect some interest or other, and which, 
if proposed, would not for the time throw that particular interest so 
affected, into opposition ? in such a case, when the adverse parties 
in the ITouse were nearly divided, any Minister might be embar- 
rassed and thwarted in his views. lie did not hesitate to assert, 
that if the right hon. Baronet had been in office, and the House 
had been constituted and divided as the present was, and he had 
brought in a Budget, and without attempting to guess what his 
plan might be — he would have had to encounter difficulties as great 
as those the present Government had had to contend with. The 
question, then, resolved itself into this — whether, in a very nearly 
balanced House of Commons, the principle laid down by the right 
hon. Gentleman should be abandoned, or whether they should have 
no Government at all. There was no provision in the constitution 
to prevent the electors returning 329 Members on each side. The 
decision of this matter rested with the constituency, and the House 
could not have any influence in the result. He therefore contended, 
that the right hon. Gentleman's course in declaring that tills state 



54 CONFIDENCE IX THE MINISTRY. 

of thino-s was contrary to the spirit of the constitution, involved 
the proposition, that in certain states of things in this country, we 
must inevitably be left without a Government. These were the 
grounds, why, on general reasons, he characterized the motion of 
the right hon. Gentleman as contradictory and impracticable. 
Then, again, he felt, that in the position which he had taken, he 
was fortified by the proceedings in the best time of our history, 
and by the doctrines laid down by the best authorities on constitu- 
tional matters. It was the first duty of the Ministers of the Crown 
to administer the existing law. If the House of Commons did not 
place sufficient confidence in the Government for this purpose, it 
might express its opinion, either indirectly by the rejection of all 
the propositions of the Administration, or directly, as was the case 
in the instance alluded to by the right hon. Baronet, Sir Robert 
Walpole. The proceedings in either case sufficiently marked the 
want of confidence of the House of Commons in the Governinent. 
Under such circumstances, there was only the one or other consti- 
tutional course to pursue — namely, either to retire from office, or 
to dissolve the Parliament. He denied, however, that it could be 
called a want of confidence, if the House withheld its assent from 
any new legislative measure, or refused to sanction the alteration 
of an old law. The right hon. Gentleman, in the course of his 
speech, alluded to several events that had occurred since the acces- 
sion of the House of Hanover to the throne of this country, and had 
stated that all the instances justified the course he had then taken. 
He, however, must take the liberty of referring to some instances 
which would not have met the views of the right hon. Baronet. 
What had been the conduct of previous Governments on the rejec- 
tion of new measures propounded by themselves, and which had 
been rejected by Parliament ? In the first instance, did the right 
hon. Baronet forget the conduct pursued by Lord Sunderland and- 
Lord Stanhope on the Peerage Bill ? He did not know whether 
the noble Lord, the descendant of Lord Stanhope, was present ; 



CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 55 

l)ut he knew that his noble Friend was on all occasions ready and 
prepared to defend his illustrious ancestor, arui lie would appeal te 
him, in perfect confidence, as to the conduct of that distinguished 
btatesrnan, on the occasion to which he referred. Had any mea- 
sure more important ever been brought before Parliament than 
that during the government of Lords Sunderland and Stanhope, 
with respect to the peerage ? The proposition was, to confine 
the prerogative of the Crown to the then number of peers, and to 
allow only an addition of six more to the number. That measure 
was introduced into the other House, after a recommendation from 
the Throne; and although it met with the general approbation of 
the other House, it was almost unanimously rejected by the House 
of Commons. Did Lord Stanhope then resign ? Did any one in 
opposition to the Government, call upon him to resign ? He was 
sure, if any such demand had been made, that the answer of either 
Lord Stanhope or Lord Sunderland would have been—" What, 
give up the seals of office at the present time, and let the Jacobites 
in ?" He was sure that the right hon. Baronet would not, for a 
moment, imagine that he intended any offensive allusion. The 
reply, then, of those great statesmen would have been, " What ! in 
such a moment to abandon our offices, and let men into power 
whom we believe to be concealed traitors V — of men, whose first 
proceeding would probably be to repeal the Toleration Act, and 
revive the bill against Occasional Conformity, and who would ren- 
der every aid in their power in support of the Pretender ? Neither 
Lords Stanhope nor Sunderland gave way, and resigned in conse- 
quence of the rejection of the Peerage Bill, and he thought that 
they were perfectly right, and were justified in the course which 
they took. Again, Mr. Pitt followed a nearly similar course in 
1786. This case was rather stronger than the former, for, in con- 
sequence of the influence of the then Duke of Richmond with the 
Government, Mr. Pitt, as Minister, was induced to bring forward a 
proposition for the general fortification of the coasts. This waj 



56 CONFIDENCE IK TEIE MINISTRY. 

shortly after the American war, during which our coasts had been 
threatened, and strong fears were entertained of landings and 
invasions, and the feelings which had been excited during the war 
had not had full time to subside. The resolution of Mr. Pitt was, 

"That it appears to this House, that to provide effectually for securing 
his Majesty's dockyards at Portsmouth ami Plymouth by a permanent sys- 
tem of fortification, founded on the most economical principles, and requiring 
the smallest number of troops possible to answer the purpose of such secu- 
rity, is an essential object for the safety of the state, intimately connected 
with the general defence of the kingdom, and necessary for enabling the fleet 
to act with full vigour and effect for the protection of commerce, the sup- 
port of our distant possessions, and the prosecution of offensive operations 
in any war in which the nation may hereafter be engaged." 

On the division Mr. Pitt was beaten, and immediately after the 
vote, he stated that he took it as the decision of the House on the 
subject, but he did not tender his resignation. Did any of the 
eminent men then opposed to him call upon him to resign, or pro- 
pose a resolution similar to the present, because he had not suffi- 
ciently the confidence of the House of Commons to enable him to 
carrv throuo-h the House a measure which he termed in his motion, 
an essential object for the safety of the state ? Did either Mr. 
Burke, Mr. Fox, or Mr. Windham complain of the conduct of the 
Government? No; for if they had, what would have been Mr. 
Pitt's answer ? He would have said, it was true that he had 
brought forward a very important measure, which he could not 
induce the House to sanction ; but he did not conceive himself 
called upon to retire from office on that ground. He would have 
said, it was for him to consider whether those who were likely to 
come after, or succeed him, were more likely to have the confi- 
dence of the House in the administration of the existing law than 
himself. He would have a^ked himself, were they more able than 
himself to cayry useful measures ? The result would have been, 
that he would have replied that, on general principles, as the 



CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. D< 

administrator of the law as it stood, he had the confidence of the 
House of Commons. Ife asked if, because the House threw out 
new measures, not essential for the existing law, a minister of the 
Crown introducing them was bound to resign ? He believed that 
the right hon. Baronet was a Member of the Government when 
the property-tax was rejected. On that occasion, did either Mr. 
Ponsouby, Mr. Whitbread, or any other leader of the opposition 
call upon the Government to resign ? Looking to the amount of 
the tax, that was a matter of more importance than the recent pro- 
posal of the Government, but no one made any suggestion of the 
kind. If any one had, the answer of Lord Castlereagh would have 
been, that he believed that the House had more general confidence 
in the then Government, than they were likely to have in the 
opposition if called upon to take office, and therefore that the 
Government were determined not to resign. He considered that 
this would have been a good and sound reason for refusing to 
resign. All these cases, however, were anterior to the Reform Bill. 
Now those who recollected the discussions in that House on that 
great measure, must remember that it was stated repeatedly by 
almost all who took part in the debate, that for the future a 
Government could not depend on a large body of thorough- 
going supporters, but that a very strong Government would 
have to contend with obstacles they had not formerly to en- 
counter. It should be recollected also that in ca?e of the defeat 
of a Government under the old system, the majority was not 
made up by parties who had left them, who were Members for 
small boroughs, but* the representatives of counties or large consti- 
tuencies. If you were to examine Mr. Pitt's defeats you would 
find that they were not occasioned by the small boroughs, but by 
the flinching to decide of the more open and liberal boroughs. If, 
before the Reform Bill, the most powerful Ministry was exposed to 
have measures which it deemed of importance defeated, that was 
Still more probable after that bill, If the right hou Baronei 

I* 



58 CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 

founded his case as to constitutional law upon the nicely- oalanced 
state of the House of Commons which had been produced by the 
Reform Bill, the right hon. Baronet would find, that, were he to 
come into office, but very few months would elapse ere, by the 
operation of the same principle, he himself would be very unpleas- 
antly reminded of this same constitutional law. For himself, he did 
not hold that any Government was bound to resign, because il 
could not carry legislative changes, except in particular cases^ 
where they were impressed with the conviction that, without such 
and such a law, they could not carry on the public service ; and 
then this was a case which did not depend upon whether the hin- 
drance arose from King, Lords, or Commons. He was quite sure 
that on both sides of the House, Gentlemen would feel that there 
were many wavs in which it miff] it be ascertained whether tin 
House did or did not repose confidence in a Ministry, without 
putting on the records of the House so ill-advised and unsound a 
resolution as this, declaring that such and such were the principles 
of the constitution. He had hitherto confined himself mainly to 
the constitutional question raised, but lie had no sort of desire tc 
flinch from any part of the question. He was clearly of opinion 
that up to this time, the Ministry had been quite justified in pur- 
suing the course which they had adopted ; and he considered, that 
as a Ministry, they had the confidence of the majority of that 
House. There were many vexatious circumstances through which 
they had had to make way ; there were many dictates of duty 
which they had had to obey, which, had they been otherwise 
than dictates of duty, might probably have been deemed humili- 
ating ; but under all the circumstances, he thought he was justified 
in saying, that up to this time the Ministry had administered the 
affairs of the country with satisfaction to the people in general and 
with honour to themselves, Op.lv a year ago, the House expressly 
declared that it was not dissatisfied with the Ministry ; and since that 
jjffiod ? rpanv things had OOWmd, >YJf§jj kd t)fP OijWl 9*> w j%> 



CONFIDENCE IN THE MtNlSTbY. 60 

out eliciting any declaration of dissatisfaction on the part of the 
House, lie would ask whether the foreign policy which had been 
pursued by the present ministry, called for the dissatisfaction of the 
House, or of the country. He would ask whether England — had 
the present Ministry had, to support its operations, a majority equal 
to that of the administration of Lord Grey ? — he would ask, whether 
England could hold higher language, or assume a nobler part than 
she had done under the conduct of the present Ministry ? Were 
the present Ministry to leave the helm of office to-morrow, they 
would leave England as proud and justly prominent as ever in her 
political position among nations, and the honour of her arms untar- 
nished. Again, in reference to domestic Government, within a 
very short period back, the most alarming symptoms had displayed 
themselves, most threatening to domestic tranquillity. Vet the 
noble Lord at the head of the Home Department, without the 
slightest interference with private rights, without any gagging 
bills, without any suspension of the habeas corpus^ without injuring 
any of the valuable securities of the people, with no other means 
than those of the most strictly constitutional character, had man- 
aged to allav the disturbances which arose, and restored the coun- 
try to its accustomed tranquillity. As to the Government of Ire- 
land by the present Ministry, he was able to appeal to the distinct 
vote of confidence accorded by the House two years ago, in favour 
of the policy of their system — a policy which had been strictly 
adhered to up to the present period. And as to the state of the 
case now, a crisis had confessedly arrived in which we were under 
the necessity of providing foi a considerable deficiency — a deficiency 
occasioned not by any act which called for a withdrawal of confi- 
dence on the part of the House, but partly by circumstances which 
rendered outlay necessary for the maintenance of the dignity and 
security of this country, and partly by the remission of taxation, 
called for by a large body of the people, and by men on all sides — • 
a i emission receiving the support, ai :>ng others, of many Gentle* 



60 CONFIDENCE IS THE MlNiS'fRV. 

men whom be expected to find voting against Ministers on the pr& 
sent occasion. In connection with the political difficulties which 
had arisen came a great commercial crisis, and both of these difficult 
questions it became the duty of the present Ministry to consider. 
It became a question whether they were to supply deficiencies in a 
way which should reliev r e the people, or in a way which should 
add to their burdens. They chose the former plan. For himself, 
he had never expected that the whole of the new financial plan 
would be carried, but he certainly had expected that the sugar and 
timber monopolies would be thrown aside, and that the corn mono- 
poly would be placed in a more favourable position than before. 
The plan, however, had failed ; but in his opinion, upon the great 
principles announced in the proposed resolution of his noble Friend, 
upon that great principle the Ministry, in .his opinion, ought to 
stand or fall. And in this opinion, considering how grave was the 
importance of the question, considering how strong the feeling was 
throughout the country — considering the support which they might 
fairly expect to derive from those interested in the question — con- 
sidering how completely the ground of those who opposed Minis- 
ters in the late debate had sunk under them — considering the 
general contempt and disregard in which were held the proceedings 
of those who opposed Ministers on the mock grounds of humanity 
— the noble Lord the Member for Liverpool seemed dissatisfied at 
the remark, but the anti-slavery societies throughout England had, 
with well-nigh one voice, sanctioned the remark, and repudiated 
the shifts of men who, because Englishmen would not longer let 
them grind the negroes, now sought to make the negroes grind 
the English — impressed with all these considerations, he felt, that 
Ministers, having a due regard to the interests of the people, and 
desirous to work out the great work now in progress, were bound 
not to shrink from taking any constitutional means of testing what 
was the public opinion. It had been said, reproachfully, — " What ! 
dissolve on a popular question, when there is such agitation, such 



CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY. 61 

excitement !" But on what suit or popular question should there be 
a dissolution ? On what question appeal to the people, but a ques- 
tion in which they felt interested ? As to the agitation which was 
suggested, there was no agitation but of the most legitimate 
description ; there was no excitement — no agitation — but what was 
created of and by the people. Surely the right hon. Baronet did 
not mean to suggest that the people were not to feel excited, were 
not to get up an agitation among themselves upon questions 
wliiofa they could not but perceive came home to their pockets, to 
their best interests and comforts ? Surely the right hon. Baronet 
did not mean to preclude them from taking an honest interest in 
the returning to Parliament of Gentlemen who should fairly repre- 
sent their sentiments, and if the right hon. Baronet did not mean 
this, there could be no meaning in his outcry about agitation. 
But enough of this; the Ministers had done what they could on 
their part, the rest must be done by the people. Let but the peo- 
ple unite again with the spirit which actuated them in 1831, to 
resist corruption and aristocratic influence, and they would have 
an easy task. If the result was different — if the people neglected 
their own interests — if they deserted their post — at least they 
would have no reason to reproach the present Ministers, who would 
then, without the smallest repining, submit to the voice of the coun- 
try, and would pursue the only course left open to them, of main- 
taining through good report and through evil report, as private 
Members of the House, the same principles which they had ad- 
vocated as Ministers.. 



TOTAL REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS— MR. VILLIERS'S 

MOTION.* 

FEBRUARY 21, 1842. 

I have listened, Sir, with much pleasure to the speech of the hon. 
Gentleman who has just sat down [Mr. Smythe] ; but, I must say, 
bearing in mind the taunts so generally urged on the ground of 
diversity of opinion against this side of the House, he could not 
have made a more unfortunate selection of topics to prove the 
unanimity on his. If the hon. Gentleman gives their due weight 
to the arguments which he has advanced in making up his own 
judgment, he will, I should think, be very loth to divide with 
those on whose side he now sits. For myself, Sir, I may perhaps 
be permitted to say, that as I never on any former occasion 
addressed the House on this subject, I feel exceedingly desirous not 
to be misunderstood in taking the course which I am persuaded 
my duty points out. I think I also owe this declaration of my 
opinion to the constituent body which I represent, and who, having 
formed a decided opinion on this subject, having imposed on me 
the responsibility of giving it my fullest consideration, and, if pos- 
sible, my zealous sanction, I may be permitted, perhaps, to say, 
that no constituent body in this empire is entitled, on this subject, 
to a more favourable hearing. There is, perhaps, no constituency 
consisting of 120,000 or 130,000 persons who can be considered as 
standing so much in the situation of an impartial judge. We have 
heard — and I have heard with great pain —the imputations and 
charges dealt out against the great community engaged in com- 

* Hansard, 3d Scries, vol l.\. p. 746-760. 



REPEAL OF TIIS CORN LAWS. 03 

merce and manufactures. Against the community *vhich 1 repre- 
sent, all those abusive epithets and vituperative attacks which 
have been so freely indulged in, fall pointless. They inhabit a 
citv, the capital of a distinct country having no foreign trade and 
no manufactures, supported principally by those connected with 
the administration of the law, by those frequenting its university, 
or those who are brought there by its literature and by the attrac- 
tions of its society. It is besides the resoit of the gentry of the 
country, who assemble there at certain stated seasons of the year 
I believe it would be difficult to find many constituencies of an 
equal extent of whom it might be so truly said that in this mattei 
they have no interest except the common weal of the empire. 
Their interest is that common to all — it is the interest of the con- 
sumer. And I can fairly say, that I believe the people of Edinburgh 
have a feeling so strong on this subject that 1 have reason to appre- 
hend their disapproval rather than their approval — that they will 
not at all events be quite satisfied with my conduct in not feeling 
myself at liberty to support the motion of my hon. Friend the 
Member for Wolverhampton. With that motion, I must say, not- 
withstanding, that I agree in principle. To the principle of the 
right hon. Baronet I am decidedly opposed. It is, I think, funda- 
mentally erroneous. 1 understand the right hon. Baronet to ground 
his measure on this principle — and if I be wrong, he will set me 
right — that the cheapness of the necessaries of life is not uniformly 
or necessarily a benefit to a people. ["iVfa, »o."] That doctrine 
the right hon. Baronet laid down in a most distinct manner when 
he introduced his plan to the H use. He said I should be deluding 
the people if I held out to them the hope that they can expect any 
real relief to their distresses from this or any such measure. lie said, 
it is a mistake to suppose that cheapness in the price of tbod is 
necessarily connected with the promotion of general prosperity. 
Now, if the right hon. Baronet is wrong, I must think that he has 
Attempted to found his measure ou a. false principle. He distinctly 



01 REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS. 

disclaimed ■ — [ mention it to his honour — all intenti >i of giving an 
exclusive benefit to any class. From him we heard no talk of the 
necessity, on constitutional grounds, of pampering a great aristo- 
cracy and enabling them to hold a certain pre-eminent position in 
the state. All these doctrines were not only abandoned by tha 
right lion. Gentleman, but I understood that he specially disclaimed 
them, and that he rested his proposal on the ground that it would 
promote the general prosperity. If then the right hon. Gentleman 
be not right as to the principle on which his measure is founded, 
')f it bt a fact that cheapness of food is a blessing to a people, then 
I am justified in saying that the measure of the right hon. Gentle- 
man is not defensible on its very fundamental principle. It has 
often happened that the doctr'aes of the political economists have 
run. counter to the prejudices of mankind, but in this case their view 
is confirmed by the general opinion of the earliest ages, and by the 
universal admission of every nation at the present time, that the 
cheapness of the first necessaries of life is a blessing. So strong 
has this feeling been, so deeply rooted, that it has been found to 
prevail in all countries and in all ages. I shall not refer to the 
Hebrew scriptures as some have done, not very judiciously I think, 
for the purpose of proving this question of the Corn-laws to be a 
religious one ; but every one acquainted with our oldest and most 
authoritative histories must be aware that they contain the clearest 
proof that in remote times, and down to our own times — and nc 
one is better qualified by classical knowledge to furnish instances of 
the fact from the histories of Greece and Rome than the right hon. 
Baronet himself — that principle which requires, one would think, 
only to be enunciated to carry conviction, was acknowledged, that 
to obtain the necessaries of life at a cheap price must be a great 
blessing. When you suppose that a man has but 40/. a year for 
the support of himself, his wife, and children, it appears monstrous 
to argue that an extra outlay of 8/. per year, for corn, being a 
pound a year on each of the eight quarters required for the su> 



REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS. 65 

tenance of his family, is not a matter in which he is deeply interested. 
I am now only putting the prima facie case. How is it met by the 
Government? Why, the right hon. Gentleman declares, against 
the universal sense of all ages and nations, that cheapness of food 
i^ not necessarily a benefit to a people. His argument, if I rightly 
understood it, was simply this — there are countries where food is 
ch«ap, and the people are not so well off as the people of England, 
and the countries which he particularly cited were Prussia anc 
Belgium. If the right hon. Gentleman used any other argument 
on this head, it escaped my attention. Now, Sir, is that argument 
absolutely worth anything — is it even a plausible argument? If 
indeed, any person were so egregiously absurd as to argue that 
cheapness of food is the sole cause of national prosperity, and that 
trade and manufactures, and a long course of successful events, 
have nothing to do with it, I could understand the exposure of the 
fallacy which pointed out other countries where the necessaries of 
life were extremely cheap, but the condition of the people not pro- 
portionably benefited. But all we have argued is, that cheanuess 
of food is a blessing to a nation, exactly in the same sense as health 
is a blessing to an individual. Of course a man in excellent bodily 
health may, from family afflictions and pecuniary difficulties, or a 
stain upon his character, be, on the whole, worse off than the 
invalid ; but that does not shake the truth of the principle that 
health is good for man, that the healthy man would not be better 
<>rT than the valetudinarian, if his circumstances were flourishing, or 
that the misery of the man in health would not be aggravated bv 
having the additional affliction of ill health. The right hon. 
Baronet's argument goes to prove that there is no such thing as a 
blessing vouchsafed by Providence to man. Fertility of soil even 
cannot, with his views, be considered a blessing to a country. 
Suppose we possessed the power, by legislative enactment, which 
we do not, of making the barren moors and mountain tops of Scot- 
land as fertile us the vale of Taunton, the right hon, Baronet, upon 



66 repeal or mi: corn laws. 

his principle, would be bound to tell us it was our duty to abstain 
from doinsr so. He would tell us to look at the state of Scotland 
and of Bengal — Bengal, a country so fertile, that they had regularly 
three harvests every year, and yet where the labourer cannot enjoy 
from his earnings one half the luxuries and comforts that are enjoyed 
by the Scottish peasant. The right lion. Baronet, pointing to the 
fertility of Bengal, and the state of the labourer there, would say 
that it is their duty to abstain from the endeavour to make Scot- 
land as fertile as Bengal. In considering this question the right 
lion. Baronet has kept out of view all those modifying circum- 
stances to which he was bound to have paid attention before 
instituting the comparison — circumstances all important in the 
consideration of such a question. The right hon. Baronet's argu- 
ment consists in leaving entirely out of the question the important 
considerations of good government, the security of property, inter- 
nal order, the immense mass of our machinery, the existence of 
civil and religious liberty, our insular situation, our great mines of 
iron in the vicinity of our coal mines, and disregarding all these 
ingredients in a nation's prosperity, he sets up his declaration 
against the general sense of mankind in all ages and in all nations. 
There is one single point in the comparison between England and 
Prussia instituted by the right hon. Baronet, to which, on account 
of its importance, I will direct the attention of the committee, 
which has been wholly passed over by the right hon. Baronet ; 
that is, our insular position, and our maritime supremacy, which is 
the consequence of that position. We have never, within the 
memory of any one living, seen an enemy in this country. Our 
fathers never saw such a thing. With the exception of the march 
of the Highland clans to Derby in the years 1745 and 1746, they 
must go back for centuries to find the time when Englishmen had 
seen a foreign enemy in this country. — Can the like be said ot 
Prussia ? In the memory of men now living, fifty pitched battles 
have been fought within her territory, and in one province 13,000 



I* 



REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS. 61 

houses have been laid in ashes by the inroads of foreign enemies. 
Is it to be wondered at, after such scenes, thai the peasant o f . 
Prussia is not as well off as the peasant of England ; or can the 
inferiority of his condition be converted into a proof that cheap 
bread is no blessing to a people 'I If the right hon. Baronet could 
prove, what he has not even asserted his readiness to prove, that 
there is a necessary connection between the cheapness of corn and 
low wao-es, he would make out something like a case in his favour : 
but it is impossible to make the attempt, much less establish the 
connection in the face of the fact that food has recently risen in 
this country, but wages have not risen in proportion. This induc- 
tion of the right hon. Gentleman is founded on an experience far 
too scanty ; he raises a superstructure far too broad to rest on the 
foundation of a single case. It is perfectly true that cheap corn 
and low wages go together in Prussia, but it is equally true that 
on the banks of the Ohio food is cheaper than either in Prussia or 
Belgium, but wages are twice as high. It is therefore perfectly 
established by experience, as I should say it is, apriori, clear, that 
the mere circumstance of the price of provisions does not in itself 
furnish any cause why the wages of the labourer should descend 
in value. Now, Sir, as the right hon. Baronet has shown no 
reason whatever why the House should believe in his principle 
that to the body of the people cheap food is not a blessing, his 
whole reasoning is swept away, for the foundation of his argument 
is unsound and indefensible. I also dissent, Sir, from the other 
great principle on which he rests his measure. I deny altogether 
that we ought to be independent, to a great extent at least, of 
foreign supply for our food. I do not argue that if we could be 
perfectly independent, it might not be a good state of things. It is 
unnecessary to argue that question, for the right hon. Baronet dis- 
claims the notion of perfect independence. 1 am not fond,: generally 
speaking, of appealing to demonstrations in matters of political 
discussion, but it seems to me that it can be demonstrated by the 



68 fcfci'fcAL 0£ TttE CORN LAWS. 

logic applicable to political science, that it is perfectly impossible 
to have corn clearer than in the surrounding countries, and to be 
independent of foreign supply. It is estimated that the people of 
this country consume annually twenty-five millions of quarters of 
corn. It is quite certain that, even on an average year, you must 
sow such a quantity of seed as will give you something more than 
the average ; and in abundant years you will produce a great deal 
more. It follows of necessity, from the very nature of the product 
and the change in the seasons, that you can never rely with cer- 
tainty on bringing to market twenty-five millions of quarters, 
and neither more nor less. If you want twenty -five millions of 
-cotton stockings, you may order them, and machinery will supply 
you with neither more nor less. But if you want to have a certain 
fixed quantity yielded by the land you cannot make any arrange 
merits which will insure such an object. If corn is cheaper abroad 
than in England, you must export your surplus produce at the 
price at which the corn of the surrounding countries brings in their 
own markets. Therefore, whatever you produce over a fixed 
quantity, will be sold at such a loss as must prove ruinous to the 
English grower, and must ultimately induce him to withdraw his 
land from such cultivation ; and experience confirms the justness 
of this speculation. England was formerly an exporting country 
as to corn. But our dependence has been gradually increasing. It 
^vas great from 1820 to 1830, and it increased in the period from 
1830 to 1840. It seems that notwithstanding all the improvements 
in agriculture, the progress of our population has been so great, in 
consequence of the discoveries in machinery and the immense trade 
which has of late grown up, that agricultural skill cannot overtake 
the advance we have made. Well, then, we are already depen- 
dent. The right hon. Baronet admits we are, but he says he prefers 
casual dependence to constant dependence. I answer that I prefer 
constant dependence to casual dependence. I prefer it partly from 
the reasons adduced to the House already by those more compe- 



REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS. 69 

tent to form a judgment on the subject than I am, because I think 
it has a tendency to make countries mutually dependent, and 
because I am persuaded that when our supply is casual, it must be 
met, not by an export of manufactures, but by a drainage of the 
precious metals — thus producing a constantly recurring state of 
panic and distress which Mr. Uuskisson predicted twenty years ago, 
with but too just a foresight. But the right hon. Baronet, on his 
own showing, nullifies his own theory. The right hon. Baronet 
says, " we shall generally be independent of foreign supply, but it 
is probable we shall have some bad years, and it may happen, that 
in those years countries in the same latitude will be in the same 
predicament. The latter may shut their ports against us, and we 
may be thus reduced to the last extremity, by relying on foreign 
aid. 1 ' Here is an admission, then, that in bad years we must be 
dependent on foreign countries, and being only casually dependent, 
we should then be at the mercy of those countries whence our 
supply is to come. By the limitation proposed, we should be 
dependent on those who might be suffering the same distress as 
ourselves, and who may have the additional motive for refusing to 
supply our wants of a national quarrel. But though it is generally 
true, that the harvests of this country, and of countries in the same 
latitude, may be bad in some particular year, it by no means fol 
lov s, that the harvests at Illinois and Ohio should be equally bad. 
So that the right hon. Gentleman's proposal amounts to this — 
' You must be occasionally dependent on such foreigners as will be 
subject to the same vicissitude of seasons, and may shut their ports 
against you, if a quarrel should arise; but you shall be interdicted 
from being dependent on those countries, which will most likely be 
able, when you are deficient, to supply you." Can anything be 
more clear, than that next to independence, and, indeed, Amounting 
in practical effect to the same thing, is a very wide dependence, a 
dependence on the whole world, on every state and every climate ? 
There is the highest probability, that the crops will not fail every 



.0 REPEAL OF THE CORN' LAWS. 

where in the flame year: There is a probability equally strong 
against our being in hostility with all the world. It seems to me, 
ihen, that the more unvarying is your demand, the greater is the 
prospect of your independence ; for it is quite clear, that the right 
Ion. Baronet does not suppose that his sliding-scale will give a 
constant supply of corn, from our own resources. I confess, I do 
think, and I have always thought, that the danger of political 
dependence following commercial dependence, was a danger which 
it is quite impossible to show has any real existence. Experience 
is so strong on this point, that clear as was the case made out by 
my noble Friend, the Member for London, the other night, he 
might have made it still stronger. So far as my in /estigation has 
gone — the right lion. Baronet will set me right if I am wrong — 
the greatest import of corn ever made up to that time in any one 
year, till of late, of which we have any account, was in the year 
1810, and from countries under the direct influence of the con- 
tinental system then established. In 1810, we imported 1,600,000 
quarters of wheat. Of these, 800,000 quarters came from France, 
and the rest from countries then provinces of France. Now, observe, 
that was in the year 1810, in the very height of the continental 
system, when it was screwed up to the utmost pitch by Napoleon, 
who deposed his own brother because he did not act up to his 
principles, and held in his hands the crowns of almost every King 
in Europe. Now, is it likely that we shall be placed again in such 
a contention, with the whole of Europe united against us, under a 
chief of such extraordinary ability and energy as Napoleon, and 
who was distinguished above all bv two things — his intense hatred 
of this country, and his resolution to attack her through her trade 
by commercial prohibitions? And yet, under such, a Government, 
and in a year when it was stretched to its farthest limit, we 
imported into England, and from his own dominion^ a greater 
quantity of porn than we had ever done previously, Timt oirevmv 
i| ; p^^l|ii]pas T hefir mm explanation which 4ops nwgy with (ti 



REPEAL Of THE CORK LAWS. 71 

effect — lias, T own, gn-eatlv influenced me in becomino- reconciled 
to that commercial dependence, which I think, in many respect.;, 
a great blessing to nations, and which I do not think, as I have 
already said, has any connection with political dependence. 1 say, 
Sir, that mutual commercial dependence is a great blessing autl 1 
fully agree with all which was so eloquently said on this point by 
my noble Friend, the Member for Tiverton. I cannot but consider 
it as most consolatory, and one of those circumstances fraught with 
best hopes for mankind, when we see a vast and increasing popula- 
tion engaged, as their most lucrative employment, in turning a 
wilderness into corn-fields, and whose numbers double every 
twenty-three years. It is impossible to place a limit to the pro- 
ducts which our skill and vast accumulation of capital will enable 
us to supply such a rapidly increasing community. We might 
supply the whole world with manufactures, and have almost a 
monopoly of the trade of the world. Whatever temporary distress 
we might feel, we should be cheered by the reflection, that other 
nations were raising abundant provisions for us on the banks of the 
Mississippi and the Vistula. On the contrary, in those lands where 
coal was not found, where there was no machinery to set up manu- 
factures, the people would look to us for clothing, cutlery, and ten 
'housand other necessaries and comforts to be supplied by our 
skill. Hut in steps the legislator and says, " You who ought to b6 
a manufacturer for the world must turn ploughman, and you who 
ire a ploughman must be turned against your will into a manu- 
facturer ; you thall not buy and sell — you shall not deal with one 
another. Artisans must starve in England, that the barren lands 
may yield an immediate rent to their owners, and the agriculturist 
in America, who is willing to spend his time, and employ his 
labour, levelling forests to supply you with food, is obliged to turn 
a manufacturer of bad cloth and bad knives, until experience has 
taught him to become your rival." All this is brought about, that 
one particular class may be benefited at the expense of the others. 



72 fettfrisAL 6£ m% eiotiN laws. 

though we have been cautioned against entering upon this subject 
by the lion, and learned Member for Bradford. I cannot refrain 
from touching it, although I hope I shall do so in such a mantlet 
that no one can condemn the spirit in which I shall speak. It is not 
possible to shut our eyes to the remote political consequences of 
such a state of things. The people have borne their privations 
patiently — they have borne their disappointments patiently, for 
with regard to those little exhibitions of feeling to which allusion 
has been made, I think as little of them as I daresay the right lion. 
Baronet himself thinks. But it is our duty to look to the future ; 
and I must say, that if there be to me any sign that is ominous — 
any sign which every friend of law, of property, and of order 
ought to contemplate with uneasiness, it is that one which I set 
so very generally hailed with acclamation by those Gentlemen whc 
professed the strongest attachment to the principles of Conservative 
policy. I know of nothing that seems more alarming than the 
obstinacy and the enthusiasm with which some persons, to whom 
I can give no better name than that of incendiaries — persons who 
profess doctrines subversive of all order and all property, labour to 
prevent a settlement of the question of the Corn-laws. When I 
know that by the advice of some noted dealers in sedition, numbers 
of people called Chartists, have gone to break up meetings held for 
the purpose of petitioning for a repeal of the Corn-laws, I look upon 
it as a sign, not of immediate, but of serious and future danger. For 
what reason was it that those whom the Gentlemen opposite 
agreed with, in designating as incendiaries and sowers of sedition, 
were desirous of preventing an alteration in what they admitted to 
be abuse ? Did that proceed from a love of the landed aristocracy, 
or of any of the interests connected with the aristocracy ? They 
all knew, that these incendiaries hated the aristocracy — that no 
persons talked more bitterly against the aristocracy ; and yet if a 
meeting were called in almost any of the great towns in this 
country to petition against the Corn-laws, those men would move 



kfit*£At or fitE corn laws. f3 

heaven and earth to cause the meeting to fail ; and for what pur- 
pose ? Evidently for this ; they knew perfectly well, that however 
much the people might complain of the effects of the present par- 
tition of power and of Government — however much they might 
feel abuses merely political, there was very little danger, unless 
they had such a grievance as the Corn-law to work upon, the} 
would never be able to raise the people against the establishec 
order of things. Thev knew, that the most formidable rebellions 
were the rebellions of the belly. I firmly believe, that '.t is net by 
chance, but by deliberation, and with a serious purpose, that those 
parties wish to have the Corn-laws remain part of our institutions, 
in order that some day or another they may be able to inflict on 
both the same death. I believe, that they wish this abuse to 
remain part of our laws, in order that some day or another — that 
day he prayed they might never see — this abuse and our laws 
might perish together. There is also another circumstance con- 
nected with the question to which I will refer. The hon. and 
learned Member for Bradford has warned us not to draw any par- 
allel from France and the French Revolution. The hon. and 
learned Member will excuse me, if I allude to the subject in a 
manner of which he cannot complain. If we observe the history 
of the French Revolution, the first thing that will strike us is, that 
that revolution was not brought about by the lower classes. It was 
not a mere movement of the Faubourg St. Antoine and the labour- 
ing classes, and had they not had, in the first instance, a part of 
the higher and aristocratic classes at their head, they could have 
done nothing. But the feuds engendered by all . r ,orts of vexatious 
distinctions between the landed aristocracy on the one hand, and 
the mercantile, professional, and literary classes on the other, were 
the causes which enabled the end of the wedge to enter. While a 
whole empire like this is united, I cannot fear the result of any 
insurrection; but I feel uneasy when I see topics of anarchy, which, 
in other countries and ages, have been confined to the lowest dis- 

VOL. II. ± 



turbers, now broached by men, of twenty thousand a-year, it u 
impossible for me not to fear, when I hear the manufacturers cry- 
ing out, that the landlords are grinding the faces of the poor ; 
and, on the other hand, men of great landed property denouncing 
the manufacturers as they have been denounced in that House, 
even since the present debates commenced. I will venture to say, 
that no expression can be more unjustifiably used by a manufac- 
turer against the landholders, than hon. Members have heard in the 
course of the present discussion, coming from the mouth of the 
hon. Member for Knaresborough, against the manufacturing body. 
[" JYo, no/"] I am quite willing that the truth of this assertion 
shall be left to the judgment of all those who heard and read that 
attack. Sir, we have now arrived at a serious stage in the inter- 
ests of this country. I do not apprehend the dangerous issue 
which I fear will ultimately arrive to-morrow, or next year, or per- 
haps five years hence ; but I say, that it is impossible that this 
country can safely follow up a system which has the effect of arous- 
ing and provoking the violent passions of multitudes, while, at the 
same time, it promotes division, rivalry, and animosity, amongst 
the two great classes of proprietors in the country. Therefore, it is 
of the greatest importance that this question should be satisfac- 
torily settled. Yet, that which is proposed, is not even contended 
to be satisfactory on the other side. The right hon. Baronet, the 
Secretary for the Home Department, abjured all notions of finality. 
The hon. Gentleman now laid it down as a wise system, that wo 
should legislate gradually, and in bit by bit reforms. The present 
measure [ would take as an instalment; but if it be an instalment, 
it is little more than a farthing in the -pound. Is it to be under 
stood, that we are to have a bill of this kind introduced as often 
as the Members of this House are summoned to assemble ? Are 
we to be doomed every year, or every three years, to renew discus- 
sions on the Corn laws? Is it to be expected, that the first Minis* 
ter of the Crown will again settle, and again unfix this great ques 



REPEAL OF THE CORN LaWS. 7") 

tion ? The more I think on the right hon. Baronet's plan, the less 
I am able to understand wi.y it was introduced. The right hou. 
Gentleman did not introduce it to please those who cry out for a 
change in the Corn -laws ; it is clear that they ; re not thought of? 
It is equally c&fhr, that he could not have introduced it to please 
his o'vn supponers, for though they would vote for him, and ean*y 
his bill through, nine-tenths of them would vote for him with much 
greater pleasure, if ho refused all change. ["No, no/"'] On this 
point I miiif, again refer to the judgment of those who observed 
the silence of Gentlemen opposite, and something very different 
from silence elsewhere. The right hon. Baronet himself avowed 
that he knew he could not please both parties, and he complained 
of the peculiarities and difficulties of his position. Now I cannot 
underhand that an enlightened statesman should risk the displea- 
sure of each party, while supported by the consciousness that he 
is 'Producing a measure that would relieve and prevent the dis- 
tresses of the country. But does the right hon. Baronet say this 
of his own measure? He told us, on the contrary, that he could 
hold out no hope of relief to the distress that prevailed. Does he 
then bring in his bill to settle the question? Why, finality is dis- 
dained on his own bench. Why, then, did the right hon. Baronet 
introduce his measure ? To prevent frauds in taking the averages, 
of the existence of which frauds he was not sure, and which he 
acknowledged must have been much exaggerated. He also intro- 
duced it to fix the price of wheat at between 54s. and 58s. a 
quarter. But the right hon. Baronet gave no reason for fixing 
upon that price more than another; all his arguments upon that 
point were extremely vague. To be sure it is a difficult thing for 
a statesman to say at what price any article ought to sell ; but 
that is the reason why all wise statesmen refuse to legislate on the 
subject, That is the reason why all wise statesmen leave the 
price to bo settled between the buyer and the seller. Taking tht* 
right hon. I"tow*t's plan (H hi* own valuation --inking it nt jij; 



70 REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS. 

own statement — it is a measure which settles nothing, it is a mea- 
sure which pleases nobody ; it is a measure which nobody askec 1 
for, and which nobody thanks him for ; it is a measure which will 
not extend trade ; it is a measure which will not relieve distress, 
and fixes the supply of provisions at a price of which the right 
lion. Baronet does not profess to know any thing, and for which 
he can give no reason. On principle then I oppose the measure 
of the right hon. Baronet, and on principle I approve of that of 
the hon. Member for Wolverhampton. In the first place I do not 
argue, nor do I understand the hon. Member for Wolverhampton 
to argue, that a duty upon imported corn, imposed bona fide for 
purposes of revenue, is wholly indefensible. At all events, I do 
not wish to be understood as expressing a decided opinion on the 
point. With reference to the principle of protection to which the 
hon. Member for Wolverhampton is opposed, there are, as m) 
noble Friend has stated, two grounds for granting it, one of 
which is that which justifies u on the ground of special burdens. It 
has not yet been proved, indeed, to my satisfaction, that the price 
of corn, grown by the English farmer, is increased by burdens 
lying peculiarly upon him ; but I think that if it can be proved 
that the price is so enhanced, the English farmer is, to the proved 
extent, entitled to protection ; reserving to myself, at the same 
time, the right of maintaining that, in such a case, it would be 
much more expedient to effect a new distribution of taxes than to 
retain the present system. With respect to another ground which 
is urged for not, at present, removing all protection from agricul- 
ture, I must say it seems to me to be unanswerable. I am not 
disposed to take away, at once, all protection from the English 
farmer. I think that time ought to be allowed to enable him to 
transfer his capital from one branch of industry to another, and 
therefore I consider the word " now" in the hon. Member for Wol- 
verhampton's amendment objectionable. Although, however, J 
4iJTer from, the hon. Member's resolution 5 I <\o not see tha,t I fl^te 



REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS. 77 

rially differ from him in principle. The hon. Member Las admit- 
ted that it would be folly and bigotry on the part of the people tc 
insist on the immediate repeal of the Corn-law, if there was any 
prospect that, within a certain reasonable distance of time, its repeal 
would be effected, with proper precautions. I clearly understand 
the hon. Member to move his resolution, in a fit of despair, as it 
were: and that, knowing he can get nothing, he is resolved to ask 
for a good deal more than he wants. I certainly understand the 
hon. Member to say that if he saw any chance of the question 
being brought to a settlement on what he considered sound prin- 
ciples, the word " now" in his resolution should not stand in the 
way of such a consummation. Whilst, however, that word remains 
in the amendment, I cannot conscientiously concur in it. With 
respect to a fixed duty, I consider it in no other light than as a 
mitigation or compromise, and as such I am ready to support it. 
I would support any measure which would afford relief to the peo- 
ple ; but I never will consider any measure to be a final settlement 
of the question which leaves a distinct protective duty greater than 
is necessary to countervail the burdens which shall be proved to 
fall peculiarly upon agriculture. I give my support to a fixed duty 
as a measure which is no doubt imperfect, but which is a decided 
improvement upon the present system. I do not mean to vote 
for the amendment, and my principal reason in rising upon this 
occasion was to declare my opinions, lest my motives should be 
misunderstood. My objection to the amendment applies onlv to 
the word " now," and on these grounds which I thought it rio-bt to 
explain, I shall decline giving my vote on the hon. Memler's pro 
position. 



?8 



THE COPYRIGHT BILL * 

April 6, 1842. 

He was seldom fbrtunate enough to agree with his nuDle Friend 
[Lord Mahon], and the present was, he believed, the first occasioc 
on which a speech made in one Parliament had been answered 
in detail in another. It would not be difficult for him to go into 
the topics adverted to by his noble Friend, and to set out anew 
the arguments which he had advanced last year, and to fortify 
them, if necessary, by additional facts and illustrations. He 
thought it, however, unnecessary to wander among topics foreign 
to the question then before the House. But if the speech of his 
noble Friend was directed against that which he had delivered last 
year, it w 7 as certain, that the measure of the noble Lord was more 
in conformity with the sentiments then expressed by him than the 
measure of which he had spoken. He had objected to a term of 
sixty years, and the noble Lord had cut down the proposed duration 
of copyright to twenty-five years. He had set forth the danger of 
the works of an author being suppressed by the operation of the 
plan then proposed, and now his noble Friend had come down pre- 
pared with a clause to meet that difficulty. If, therefore, he were 
to apply himself to answering the speeches made in defence of the 
measure of Mr. Sergeant Talfourd last year, he should be arguing 
against a principle not now before the House. He therefore pro- 
posed to coniine himself strictly to the matter then in hand. He 
had never objected to an enlargement of the term of copyright tc 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. lxi. p. 1863-18? J, 



COPYRIGHT BILL. 7 9 

men of letters. When Mr. Sergeant Talfourd brought in his bill, 
he had not opposed it. It was his intention, on the contrary, to 
vote for the second reading, but the learned Sergeant concluded 
his speech by expressing his desire, that no one would vote for the 
measure who might be afterwards disposed to reduce the large 
term of sixty years which he proposed. The learned Sergeant 
had said, — 

" Don't let me have support in this stage, if it be hereafter meant to 
reduce the term I propose to fifteen years. I despise such support; I don't 
jvish for it." 

TTie learned Sergeant having expressed himself to that effect 
it became impossible for him to vote for the second reading. But 
they had now entered upon the discussion of this question in a 
very different spirit. He was not unwilling to extend, consider- 
ably, the protection afforded to authors. On the contrary, he 
was disposed to extend it more than his noble Friend, but at the 
same time lie must express the opinion, that the mode by which 
his noble Friend proposed to effect their common object was bad, 
and that by which he sought to reach it was good. The present 
state of the law was this, copyright for life, or for twenty- eight 
years. His noble Friend proposed copyright for life, with the 
addition of twenty-five years. Now, what he proposed was this, 
copy light for life, or for forty-two years, whichsoever shall be the 
longer. He proposed to add a certain term of fourteen years 
more to the present term of twenty-eight years. Now, he thought, 
with all submission, he should be able to show to demonstration, 
that this plan was more just and reasonable, a greater boon to 
men of letters, and much less inconvenient to the public than the 
proposal of his noble Friend. He presumed it would be admitted, 
that with respect to all benefits intended to be conferred for the 
advancement and encouragement of works of literature, or those 
of an analogous kind, it was of the greatest importance that such 



80 COMTRIGHT Bil.L. 

benefits should not be capriciously or irregularly bestowed, ft 
was of the highest importance that they should, as nearly as pos- 
sibie, be equally distributed. It was of the greatest importance, 
that those who best deserved the encouragement to be given 
should gain the largest share, and enjoy the highest degree, and 
that the smallest share should fall to the lot of those who least 
deserved it. Upon these principles, which he conceived were 
perfectly clear, he believed he could succeed in showing that what 
he proposed was preferable to the measure of the noble Lord. He 
admitted, that perfect equality could not be gained. He agreed, for 
reasons so obvious, that it was quite unnecessary to enter into a detail 
of them, that there must be a term for life. But life being, of course, 
liable to casualties, and its duration being uncertain, he contended, 
that the evil would be exaggerated by the means proposed by the 
noble Lord. Take the instance of two contemporary authors, 
both ladies, and distinguished in the lighter arts of literature, 
Madame d'Arblay and Miss Austen. The most beautiful of the 
novels of Miss Austen would have only twenty-eight years of 
copyright, for the authoress died shortly after the composition, 
while the copyright of Madame D'Arblay's Evelina would last 
sixty-two years. Observe the contrast — twenty-eight years for one 
work, and sixty-two years for the other, each being of the same 
class of literature. He was not taking upon himself to determine 
upon the merits of the one work -or of the other, but he simply 
adduced the instance to show the unequal working of his noble 
Friend's proposal upon two works of the same kind. Observe 
what his noble Friend would do. His noble Friend would add 
twenty-five years to the sixty-two years in the one case, and in 
the other leave the twenty-eight years where they were ; thus 
making a difference as between twenty-eight and eighty-seven. 
He would raise the short term to forty-two years, and while his 
noble Friend extended the difference between the two terms to 
sixty years, he diminished it to eighteen or twenty years. Indeed) 



COPYRIGHT BILL. «1 

if gentlemen would go through the literary history of the country 
and, taking the principles of his noble Friend and of himself, appl\ 
them to the works of authors for two centuries and a half, they 
would hardly find a case in which the application of his noble 
Friend's proposal could be wished for in preference to that whict 
lie had the honour to submit as an amendment. Milton died i? 
1674. Now, all Milton's copyrights wouid, by the proposition of 
his noble Friend, expire in 1699. Comus was written in 1634 
To Comus, then, his noble Friend gave sixty-five years of copy 
right, to Paradise Lost thirty-one years, and to Paradise Regained 
and Samson Agonistes twenty-eight years. Compare his proposi- 
tion with that of his noble Friend, and he would venture to say, 
that if the House were legislating only in the case ofthe works of 
Milton, it would determine that the fairer and more legitimate 
scheme — the scheme more gratifying to its own mind — more con- 
sistent with its own sense of justice to the author — and in every 
way more beneficial to the public, would be, that all the works 
of that great writer should have a copyright of forty-two years, 
rather than that the worst of them should be protected for a very 
long term, and the best of them left with scarcely any protection 
at all. Take another instance — take Dryden, the next great name 
in English poetry. His noble Friend's proposition would give a 
magnificent protection to the inferior poetry upon Oliver Crom- 
well, and to the Wild Gallant, and other bad plays, whilst to the 
Fables and to the Ode in Honour of St. Cecilia's Da>/, which 
were published towards the close of the author's life, and which 
classed amongst the most exquisite productions of his pen, the 
protection would be comparatively slight and insignificant. The 
verses which Dryden wrote upon Oliver Cromwell were published 
in 1658 ; the copyright proposed by his noble Friend would extend 
to 1726, a term of sixty-eight years; but to Dryden's last volume, 
containing the Fables and the Ode in Honour of St. Cecilia's 
Uuy, the copyright, according to his noble Friend's plan, would 

4* 



81 copYRiGttf fcilt. 

be cut down to twenty-eight years. So that the copyright of 
Dryden's worst works would continue for sixty-eight years, whils 
the copyright of the Fables and of the Ode in Honour of St 
Cecilia's Dai/, the last great work of his life, would continue only 
for twenty-eight years. Then take Pope — it really mattered very 
little what great author one referred to, and the multiplication of 
instances after all might appear to be wholly unnecessary — but 
take Pope. His noble Friend's proposition would give to Pope's 
Pastorals, which were written when the author was only sixteen 
years of age, and which were remarkable as the literary produc- 
tion of a mere youth, a copyright of sixty years ; but when he 
came to the later and more able productions of the same writer, 
to The Dunciad, for example, in its finished state, his noble Friend 
would give only a protection of thirty years. Now, according to 
the plan which he proposed, these inequalities, so incongruous in 
themselves, and so utterly inconsistent with the relative value of 
the works to be protected, would be entirely overcome, because to 
every one of the works of Milton, Dryden, and Pope, would be 
given a uniform protection of forty-two years. Coming to writers 
of a later period, take the works of Johnson. Johnson's first 
work was a translation of a volume of Travels in Abyssinia, pub- 
lished in 1735 ; and a book so poor, that Johnson himself did not 
like to hear it mentioned in his later years. When Boswell told 
him that he had obtained a copy of it, " take no notice of it," said 
he, " 'tis a thing to be forgotten." To this work his noble Friend 
would give a protection for the enormous period of seventy-five 
years, whilst to the Lives of the Poets, he would give only a pro- 
tection of thirty-five years, and to The Tour to the Hebrides, a 
much shorter protection. So that in the instance of Johnson, as in 
the instances of the other great writers he had mentioned, the best 
works would receive only a comparatively slight protection, whilst 
the earlier and very inferior productions would receive an amoum 
of protection infinitely beyond their relative merit or value. There 



COPYRIGHT BILL. 83 

was another instance that he could not pass by — the instance of 
Ilenrv Fielding, whose first works no human being would ever think 
of reading, nor deem it worth while to revert to, or perhaps evei 
remember or know anything of, except for the excellence of his sub- 
sequent great works, Tom Jones and Amelia. Who would ever think 
of classing The Temple Beau, and a host of earlier dramatic pieces, 
possessing no worth, and evincing no genius, with the incomparable 
Tom Jones ? Yet to the first of these his noble Friend would give 
a copyright of fifty-two or fifty-three years, whilst to the last he 
would afford only a protection of thirty years. Take any or all 
of the most eminent writers in our language, and there was not 
one of them to whose works his noble Friend's proposition would 
not apply in the same objectionable manner. The worst works 
would be protected for a very long term — the best works only for 
a comparatively short term. But upon the principle which he 
proposed, it would be found,, that all the works of the same writer 
won id be protected, almost without exception, for a regular, fixed, 
and detinue term of forty -two years. Take the instance of Burke ; 
his first little tract on the Vindication of Natural Societ;/, in all 
probability, would not be remembered at this day, but for the 
subsequent eminence of the works of his maturer age. Yet his 
noble Friend (Viscount Mahon) would give to this earlier work a 
copyright of sixty years, whilst to the latter and greater produc- 
tions of the same great mind, such as the work on The French 
Revolution, and The Rcjicide Peace, he would give only a protec- 
tion of thirty years. This appeared to him to be the ruling vice 
M' his noble Friend's scheme. Nobody would pretend to doubt 
that the later works of all the great writers he had named were 
infinitrlv the more valuable ; infinitely more illustrative oi' the extra- 
ordinary powers of mind possessed by the respective authors; infi- 
nitely the more worthy of the protection to be afforded by the exten- 
sion of copyright. He had shown the sort of protection that would 
be given by his noble Friend's plan. There was this striking incon- 



84 COPYRIGHT BILL. 

sistency in it ; for Madame d'Arblay's Evelina, it would give % 
copyright of eighty-seven years, whilst to Milton's Paradise Lost x 
it would give a copyright of only twenty-eight years, lie could 
conceive only one justification for this enormous inequality, and 
that would be, that the works to which the greater protection was 
given were better than the works to which the lesser protection 
was given; but it would be seen from what he had briefly stated, 
that under his noble Friend's plan the crudest and least finished 
books of all authors would receive the greater protection, and the 
ablest and best works the lesser protection. This, as he had 
said, was the ruling vice of the plan ; and it was a vice that 
applied not only to the literature of England, but was equally 
applicable to the literature of all ages and all countries. There 
was no copyright with the Greeks and Romans ; but go back to 
the most brilliant days of Greece and Rome, and it would be 
found, that what is true as regarded the earlier and the later works 
of the great writers of our own age, was equally true as regarded 
the youthful and the mature productions of the great men of 
antiquity. What comparison could be drawn between the earlier 
and the later works of Sophocles ? Who would mention in the 
same breath, or hardly in the same day, the speech against his 
Guardians, and the speech upon the Crown of Demosthenes? 
Yet, under such a plan as that now proposed, the inferior of these 
works would receive a protection twice as long as the works which 
gave to the authors their immortality. Go to Rome ; the same 
remarks applied to the works of Cicero. Take a later period. 
Go to Spain, go to France ; the same remark applied to the writ- 
ings of Cervantes and Racine. Go to Germany ; his noble Friend 
would give to Schiller's Robbers a longer protection than to Wal- 
lenstein, and to Goethe's Sorrows of Werter, than to W'ilhelm 
Meister. He begged pardon, if this reference to the authors of 
other countries, and of other ages, fatigued the Douse ; but hon 
Gentlemen must feel that upon this subject literary history was tU 



COPYRIGHT BILL, gfl 

same thing as national and constitutional history upon questions 
of general policy. The inequality in the productions of authors, to 
which he had briefly endeavoured to direct the attention of the 
House, was not a matt3r of accident — not the result of mere chance 
■ — it was one of the inevitable consequences of the structure of the 
human mind, which did not receive all its impressions at once, but 
grew in strength and wisdom as it advanced in experience, and 
extended its ran ere of observation. If he and his noble Friend were 
to sit down together, and draw up a list of the most eminent writers 
to whose works his noble Friend's plan would give a protection 
of sixty years, and another list of the most eminent writers, whose 
works, under that plan, would receive a protection of less than 
forty years, it would be found, that the works coming w r ithin the 
more limited range of years were infinitely more numerous, 
and infinitely better than the number that would be included 
within the more extended range. Under his noble Friend's plan, 
the longest period of protection would be given to the works 
writ en in the earlier stage of the author's life. So that if a writer 
pub isheel a work hastily, at sixteen or eighteen years of age, 
as Pope published his Pastorals, or rather wrote his Pastorals, 
for he did not publish them till he was twenty-one, that early, 
crude, and imperfect work would receive probably double the pro- 
tection afforded *.o the later and abler works upon which, perhaps, 
the whole of his reputation might rest. It was perfectly true, that 
young men often displayed extraordinary powers of genius ; but it 
was not the fact, as far as experience yet went, that their first 
works were their best works. This was true even as regarded 
works of imagination. No great work of imagination had been 
produced under the age of thirty or thirty-five years ; and the 
instances were few in which any had been produced under the 
age of forty. Whatever powers of genius a writer might be pos- 
sessed of, the saying of Marmontel was yet true, that "a man 
cannot paint portraits till he lias seen faces." Whatever th« 



86 eoptmottT BfLt. 

vivacity or brilliancy of fancy exhibited in the writing of youth, i 
remained for the nicer and more discriminating observation of 
maturity to give that sterling value to the productions of the 
mind an which secured immortality to the author. The fact, there- 
fore, was, that in matters of imagination, the class of books which 
his noble Friend's proposition would most favour, were likely to 
be the worst, whilst those which lie particularly discountenanced 
were likely to be the best ; for whilst his noble Friend gave this 
enormous addition to the copyright of works, published in the 
earlier vears of the author's life, he did nothing whatever for such 
works as might be published two or three years before the author's 
death ; because by the existing law, there was a copyright of 
twenty-eight years from the time of the publication, and under his 
noble Friend's plan, only a copyright of twenty-five years from 
the time of the author's death. So that in point of fact, as related 
to the work of an author published in the last year of his life, tha 
protection given by his noble Friend would be less than the protec- 
tion afforded by the present law ; and for any work published 
during the last seventeen years of an author's life, the protection 
under his noble Friend's system would not be so long as under the 
plan which he proposed. Now he ventured to say, that no man 
acquainted with literary history would deny, that taking the 
writings of authors generally, the best and most valuable of their 
works had been produced within the last seventeen years of their 
!i7es. He had mentioned shortly and rapidly the names of but 
a few of the English works published within the last 250 years, to 
which his proposition would give a longer term of copyright than 
ihe proposition of his noble Friend. If the House should find 
included in that list, with scarcely an exception, everything that 
was greatest and most conducive to the glory of our national lite- 
rature in the eyes of the world, then he did not see how it could 
hesitate about preferring his plan to that of his noble Friend. H« 
did not propose to give to the earlier and cruder works of authorf 



COPYRIGHT BILL. 8) 

the same extent of copyright as his noble Friend would give 
them ; but he proposed a longer term of copyright for their 
maturer and better works. He did not propose to give to Love's 
Labour Lost the same amount of protection as to The Tempest, to 
Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, but to Spencer's Faery Queen, to 
Bacon's Novum Organon and Be Augnuntis, to Lord Clarendon's 
History, to Milton's Paradise Lost, to Locke's Essay on the 
Human Understanding, to Dryden's Fables, to the whole of Addi- 
son's Spectator, Taller, and Guardian, to Cowper's Task, to 
Hume's History, to Gibbon's History, to Smith's Wealth of 
Nations, to all the poems of Burns, all the poems of Byron, and, 
with the single exception of Waverley, to all the novels of Sir 
Walter Scott : to the whole of these specimens of our literature — 
which he defied his noble Friend to match — to the whole of these, 
his proposition would give a longer term of copyright than the 
proposition set forth in the bill now before the House. To many of 
them, and amongst them the very greatest, such as the Faery Queen 
and Paradise Lost, his proposition, as compared with that of his 
noble Friend, would give an extension of from ten to fourteen years. 
He thought therefore that he had shown this : — first, that his noble 
Friend had proposed to distribute his protection very unequally, 
whilst he proposed to distribute it equally ; and, secondly, that his 
noble Friend's inequality was an inequality on the wrong side, giving 
the greater protection to the worst instead of the best class of books. 
Having established that point, he did not see how his (Mr. Macau- 
lay's) amendment was to be resisted. He thought that there were 
other advantages attaching to the proposition winch he ventured 
to offer to the House, which gave it a decided superiority over that 
of his noble Friend. He conceived that upon all the principles 
upon which patronage ought to be given to literature his was the 
better proposition of the two. He should therefore move in the 
third clause of the bill now before the House, to leave out the 
WPr4* " twenty-five years ;" ajnj \\\ a, Ittbgiqueut part of fc^e sarm? 



fl,9 COPYRIGHT BILL. 

clause to substitute for " twenty-eight years," the wor.ls " forty-twc 
years." If the House adopted these amendments he thought it 
would confer a great boon upon literature in the most unexcep- 
tionable manner, and with the smallest possible inconvenience tc 
ths public. 



69 



INCOME TAX.* 

APRIL 11, 1842. 

Since it had been decided, upon a full consideration, that consti- 
tutional right and public convenience were to yield to the mere 
usage of 150 years, he, in performance of the promise he ha' 
made, and in performance of the duty he owed to his con 
stituents, should lay before the House the substance of the 
petition which they had placed in his hands, and he trusted that, 
before long, he should be able to perform that duty in a much 
more regular manner ; for he could not believe in the long 
continuance of an abuse which for the time had been supported by 
a majority of a single vote, without the shadow of a single reason. 
lie should state, as concisely as if he were presenting a petition, 
that he had been charged with a petition from the Lord Provost 
the magistia^es, and the town council of the city of Edinburgh, 
with the statement which, in some manner or other, consistently 
with its rules, he was to convey to the House, that the proposed 
tax upon all kinds of income was calculated to cause the most 
palpable injustice, would operate most unfairly and most une- 
qually, would open the door to the greatest fraud, and would 
render necessary the application of machinery of the most 
inquisitorial nature ; and he had to inform the house that other 
resolutions had been placed in his hands, from the Chamber of 
Commerce of Edinburgh, strongly opposed to the proposed tax, 
which he was also requested to communicate to the House in some 
mode according with its regulations. His own opinion upon this 

* Hansard, 3d Scries, vol. Uii p. 25o-26& 



00 INCOME TAX. 

subject agreed with that of his constituents, and it had not been 
shaken by the speech, to which he had paid the utmost attention; 
delivered by the right hon. Baronet at the close of the last sitting 
of that House. The real questions which, as he thought, they 
had to consider were, whether this were not a tax that ought to 
be imposed only in the greatest extremity, and whether the 
circumstances of the country were such as to place it at present in 
this very great extremity. His answer to these questions was this, 
that an Income-tax was a tax which nothing but the last extremity 
could vindicate, and that this last extremity did not exist. With 
regard to the first part of the proposition the right hon. Baronet 
had not said one word. He had not said one word intended to show 
that gross inequality would not exist in the collection of this tax> 
and not a word to show that this was not a most frightful griev- 
ance. Instead of proving that the inequality was not the most 
unjust part of the tax, the right hon. Gentleman had contented 
himself with showing that this inequality and this injustice were 
essential parts of every income-tax. When hon. Gentlemen on his 
side of the House were contending that a property- tax and an 
Income-tax were inseparable — when they proved that equal 
injustice must accompany both — as often as they exposed this 
injustice, so often did hon. Gentlemen opposite receive that 
declaration with applause. He believed that it was next to 
impossible to have a property-tax without an Income-tax, and he 
believed it was a tax which was one of the most unjustifiable that 
could be imposed by Parliament. He allowed that necessity 
might justify the adoption of an Income-tax, just as necessity in 
the time of war justified the impressment of men for the navy — 
just as, in time of war, it was justifiable to burn down a town 
and sacrifice, without compensation, the property of the inhabit- 
ants, because, under such circumstances, the safety of the Stat€ 
was the supreme law, and over-rode every other, but the inequality 
of tbe tax w$s so gross ? it was so distinctly deejay} by Jjqji, 



INCOME TAX. §1 

Gentlemen on the other side of the House that this inequality was 
such an essential part of the imposition, the evil was so great, 
that only in the most extreme necessity ought the House of 
Commons to lend itself to the imposition of such a burden. If in 
substance the tax were unjust, the mode of collection would not 
be le.-s oppressive. The right lion, Gentleman opposite leant to 
the opinion of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for 
Bath — whom he did not see then in his place — when he said, 
" Why, if you are honest, are you afraid to state openly the 
amount of your property ? Why is there this singular squeamish- 
ness? Poverty is no reproach, if it be not the result of a man's 
folly or a man's crime. I have no objection to declare to the 
world the amount of my income. It is, a shame to say that 
professional income is not to be taxed in the same manner as other 
men's incomes." No doubt the lion, and learned gentleman said 
what he felt : lie honoured the sentiment: he should be sorry not 
to participate in it. It might be easy for a man of a philosophical 
turn of mind — it might be easy for the lion, and learned Gentle- 
man, who was a member of the Legislature, who had received 
marks of the public confidence from large bodies of his fellow- 
countrymen ; he might be indifferent whether he declared lira 
fortune and made his return. It was his turn of mind — it was a 
desirable turn of mind, not to feel any aggrandisement if he had a 
fortune of 4,000/. a-year, and not to feel any degradation at 
having only 400/. But was that the general state of feeling 
among the people of this country for whom they were about to 
legislate. Was it a fact that the feeling of the people of this 
country were t'Jt against avowing their poverty ? Let them look 
at what was taking place in the world. Was not half the life of 
many men a war to avoid the appearance of poverty ? Were not 
the efforts constant to appear a little above the true state ? If this 
were the case, it was to no purpose to say that a better and a more 
philosophical spirit would raise men above those false notions, and 



ft a INCOME TAX. 

elevate their feelings. The people of this country had this feeling 
— whether the feeling were reasonable or not, it was not necessary 
to inquire. When he was in India, he was aware that there was a 
feeling of degradation in a woman if she should appear with her 
face unveiled. He knew that the feeling was unreasonable ; he 
did not share in it, but did they not conceive that in legislating 
for such a people this was a feeling to which they ought to defer, 
and that they ought not to treat such prejudices with contempt ? 
He would appeal against the authority of the right hon. Baronet, 
and against the authority of the hon. and learned member for 
Bath upon this subject, to the authority of one of the greatest 
moral philosophers and the greatest political economist that this 
country ever produced, Adam Smith, who declared that a tax 
upon income can be raised only by means of an annual investiga- 
tion of income, which was more intolerable than any tax whatever. 
Here the tax was in its nature unjust, and it was confessed that 
the mode of its collection must necessarily be most vexatious. 
The first question then was answered. It was a tax which ought 
to be resorted to only in the last extremity. Was there this 
extremity at the present moment ? He denied it. He conceived 
that the right hon. Baronet, in his laboured but ineffective address 
when he first brought forward this tax, had not made out any such 
necessity. With regard to the war in Affghanistan, although the 
right hon. Gentleman had made a dexterous rhetorical use of 
the. topic, what he had said appeared to him in the light of mere 
sophistry. 

" Did the people," said the right hon. Gentleman, " ever know of sueh a 
disaster — was there ever such a defeat as this?" 

And then with great feeling, which he had no doubt was most 
sincere, the right hon. Gentleman added, 

" A whole army has perished ; only one, or two, or three persons hnve 



INCOME TAX. 93 

escaped from this groat army to bear the news of the destruction, and yet 
you talk of opposing this tax." 

All those who knew him knew that be could speak of this 
destruction in no other way than as an event most painfully 
disastrous. There was not one feeling entertained by bon. Gentle- 
men on the opposite side of the House in which be did not parti- 
cipate. If be did not now consider that expedition with a view to 
the defence of the policy by which it was dictated, it was because it 
was not then the proper time for sucb a consideration ; be himself 
bore none of the responsibility attaching to it ; lie was not in the 
country when that expedition was sent forth ; be was not in office 
till the expedition was over — till Shah Soojab was already placed 
on the throne of the Aftghans. Every one who read the story of 
that expedition — every foreigner actuated by no hostile feelings — 
must feel deeply touched with its sad fate. He need not say with 
what feelincrs he must read it — be who had been on terms of the 
most friendly intercourse with many of those honourable and most 
brave men, perfidiously butchered, and with the amiable and 
accomplished women, now at the mercy of the murderers of the ; r 
husbands. No, it was a result disastrous when they talked of it 
in relation to the officers and the army, disastrous to the sufferers, 
disastrous when they thought of the feelings of the brave men 
now dead, utterly disastrous when they reflected on the feelings 
of some now living ; but the House had now to deal with it as a 
financial question only. To introduce it into this debate for the 
purpose of aggravating the existing difficulties, that was what be 
said was making an unfair, sophistical, and rhetorical use of this 
great calamity. The question they had now to discuss was, only 
as to how this calamity bore upon the Income-tax, as it affected 
the pounds, shillings, and pence. Let him ask whether the right 
hon. Gentleman contemplated this calamity when he brought in 
the Income-tax ? Was not his use of it an afterthought ? Yet 



94 IKCOMfi TA*. 

this very event was now put in the fore-front in every discussio© 
jhat took place upon the Income-tax, although, when the tax wa? 
proposed^ this disastrous result was never thought of. Had the 
right hon. Gentleman advanced one-fourth of his Ways and 
Means on this account ? If not, how could he call upon thorn for 
this, because his finances were greatly impaired by a disaster such 
as was never heard of in the history of this country ? Although 
the House had not as yet before it the supplementary estimates, 
he was not without the means, as a late Secretary of War, of 
considering the effect which these disasters would have upon the 
estimate. He did not say that he could produce a correct 
estimate of the additional charge ; it had been the ordinary course 
that the estimates should be brought in and voted before the 
Ways and Means were proposed. They had not the estimates 
before them, but nothing could be more futile than to institute 
any comparison between the charges for this war and the charges 
for the cheapest of the European wars, even the last. In his 
opinion, the Government were taking a wise and spirited course ; 
they were doing what they ought to do. He knew nothing 
except what he learnt from the public prints; they were taking 
vigorous measures for conveying British troops to our Indian 
possessions, and he would give to those measures his most cordial 
support, as much as if he still sat on the other side of the House. 
No sum which was bond fide required in reference to those 
measures should be refused bv him. nor should any burden 
necessary to meet those sums meet with one word of opposition. 
yie did not anticipate that, if due prudence and vigour were 
shown, the damage sustained might not be repaired ; but still 
great Mahomedan success in our Indian possessions could not fail 
to fall like a spark into the midst of tow. It must be felt 
throughout all Islam, from the states of Morocco to the coasts of 
Coromandel. He had no doubt that the firmness and prudence 
which were so necessary and so much required would be shown. 



INCOME TAX. 05 

because they had a government in which was the Duke of Wel- 
lington, and which could obtain the advice of the most able 
military men, by whose aid every step would be taken in the most 
prudent and most vigorous manner. But hon. Gentlemen must 
consider that the rule invariably acted upon when troops weresenf 
on an expedition to India, was to charge them on the Indian 
revenue. [An hon. Member: "What is the state of that reve- 
nue ?"] Suppose the right hon. Gentleman should choose to say 
that he would charge these troops on British resources, what 
would be the charge for these reinforcements to India ? What 
was the force which the right hon. Gentleman meant to send to 
India ? They must wait for a reply to this (juestion till they 
received the supplementary estimates ; but 10,000 or 12.000 
troops would be enough to meet the danger. He thought that a 
regiment of 1,100 men serving in India cost annually 32,000/. ; 
he believed that the whole charge, therefore, for such a force as 
the right hon. Gentleman contemplated would be 400,000/. a year. 
He did not say that this charge should not be met, but it was not 
enough to take for such a charge the imposition of an Income-tax. 
In the year 1798 the Income-tax was first imposed ; England stood 
alone, France had crcssed the Khine and had passed the Alps, 
Austria stood trembling for her very existence, Ireland was in a 
state of revolt, the 3 per cents, were at 50 ; then the resolution 
for the Income-tax was taken. It was doubled when the whole 
continent of Europe lay prostrate at the feet of France, and 
England was loaded with expenses to which the present bore no 
comparison. Three hundred thousand soldiers in the army, and a 
hundred thousand men in our navy. The estimates for the navy 
were 19,000,000/. — more than the .whole of our present army and 
navy combined; the estimates for the army were 19,000,000/. 
additional. When the right hon. Gentleman said that the one 
disaster in India was greater than those which befell us in those 
years, when he said that it was greater tJirtR the Wcikhcyep 



96 INCOME TAX. 

expedition, he was prepared to meet the right, hon. Gentleman on 
that ground — but in a financial speech the right hon. Gentleman 
appeared not to have made out his case — the right hon. Gentle- 
man appeared to be applying to a serious reverse, to a painfu' 
calamity, but which was no serious blow to the financial resources; 
the one remedy, the employment of which only the greatest 
distemper in the State could vindicate. He must say, also, that 
the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman was not calculated to 
inspire foreign countries with a just idea of the spirit and resources 
of England. He did not say that the calamity was not reparable, 
but let them see the manner in which the right hon. Gentleman's 
proposition— -the speech to which he alluded was the right hon. 
Gentleman's first speech — and let them see how the right hon. 
Gentleman's statements were received on the continent. When 
he opened a French paper, he found only the largest praise of the 
right hon. Baronet, and of the greatness and firmness of his 
proposition. " It is a sign," say they, " that the English aris- 
tocracy, which lias long been the envy and dread of Europe, is 
fast falling into its decline — a tax the most odious that could be 
imposed in war had been renewed in the time of peace." And 
they praised the minister who would consent to so bold a measure, 
which they looked upon as an evidence, if not of the destruction 
at least of the decline, of this country. Were those the terms ir 
which an English Minister would like to be spoken of? Were 
those the measures of which an English Minister would like to 
boast? — when it was a demonstrable fact that England was better 
capable of fighting for her own defence, and of maintaining a 
great war, than she ever was in the whole course of her existence 
as a nation. In contemplating the step about to be taken, he 
could not much wonder that politicians abroad who saw the 
odiousness of this tax — who knew that it had never been laid on 
before, except in the extreme emergency of the State — who knew 
that it was a tax which, as soon, as peace returned, was the firbt to 



INCOME TAX. 9*7 

be repealed, but which they now saw us returning to — they being 
aware of the nature of our disasters in A Afghanistan, should form 
an erroneous opinion with regard to the degree to which the 
powers and resources of this country are affected. The right lion. 
Baronet averred that he had said nothing so alarming as that 
which he had ascribed to the right hon. Baronet. He had, 
however, repeated what he believed to be an important truth — 
what he believed to be a truth which it was important to the 
right hon. Baronet and to the House should be repeated and 
made known. He could not alogether acquit the right hon. 
Baronet of having used the Aftghan disaster in this debate, which 
had been altogether unforeseen, by taking hold of the feelings 
which were naturally excited by the extent of our military cala- 
mity, and turning that misfortune round with the skilfulness of a 
practised debater, in order to make it tell upon the financial ques- 
tion before the House. He would now say a few words upon 
another topic — the state of the Indian finances. The right hon. 
Baronet said that there was a deficit there as well as at home, 
and. said the right hon. Baronet : — 

44 It may become a matter of most serious consideration, whether England 
sho'ild not step in, in some manner, to lend some sort of assistance, either 
by credit or otherwise, for the purpose of supporting the credit of the 
Government in India." 

That was a grave and important question; and he would not 
say, that the view of the right hon. Baronet might not be very 
correct, and entitled hereafter to consideration ; but that was no 
argument for the Income-tax, at this moment ; for, surely, it was 
a good principle, that before they voted money, they should know 
precisely what the scheme was to the maintenance of which it was 
to be applied. Before the right hon. Baronet came to the House 
for money in aid of the Indian finances, surely he should iuform 
them what he meant to do with it — when and where he meant to 
VOL. U. 5 



98 INCOME TAX. 

apply it. Therefore, lie altogether put that matter out of sight in 
the consideration of this question, as having no concern whatever 
with the vote which they were called upon to grant. Tie believed 
that he was right in saying, that since the war, exclusive of the 
Income-tax, 22,000,000/. of taxes had been taken off, and he 
thought that it might be taken for granted, that even a greater 
sum than 22,000,000/. would have been derived from those sources 
of taxation, if the same taxes had still been in existence. But 
that tax which had been the last to be imposed — the first to be 
repealed, was that to which the right hon. Baronet first had 
recourse for the purpose of relieving him from his difficulties. He 
believed, that the right lion. Baronet had other means of relief — 
he might have applied to sugar, an article upon which the late 
Government had rested considerable reliance. And upon this 
point, he must say, that he thought that the memory of the right 
hon. Baronet had played him false. The right hon. Baronet had 
said on Friday, unless he had misunderstood what had fallen from 
him, and he could scarcely have done so, that he (Sir R. Peel) 
had never intended to say, that the sugar scheme of the late 
a-overnment would not have increased the revenue of the country 
— that he never dreamt of saying, that these were not taxes a 
reduction of which would have produced an increased revenue. 
His memory, he owned, had led him to a different belief, and he 
had since referred to the printed report of the speech of the right 
hon. Baronet, and that certainly confirmed him in his impression, 
and he believed, that he might appeal to hon. Gentlemen near 
him, whether the report was not a correct one. The right hon. 
Baronet was represented to have said : — : 

" There is another source of revenue, without adopting the process of 
exhaustion, and. which was brought forward by the late Government, to 
which I find it my duty to advert. ' Shall I hope for increased reyenue 
from diminished taxation ? Yes, but before I apply myself to this subject,, 
let i&e remind you of the extent of your djSicuHies, Jf ft bg proved. 



mcOME fAX. OS 

that these difficulties are only occasional and casual, no man can bavo 
groater confidence in the soundness of the principle of a reduction o? 
taxation ; but having given the subject tny fullest and fairest consideration, 
I think it Would be a mere delusion, under present circumstances, to hope 
for a supply of our deficiencies from diminished taxation. As 1 said before, 
I have the firmest belief that the adoption of any such plan as that pro- 
posed by the late Government, or the adoption of any other plan for raising 
the necessary revenue of the country through diminished taxation, will 
not afford any immediate relief, or any resource on which we can count for 
the supply of the deficiency of the revenue. I have looked with consid- 
erable attention to the effect produced by the remission of taxes on articles 
of great consumption. I find, in some cases, that elasticity which gives 
you, after a lapse of time, an increase of revenue; but that in almost 
every case — I believe in every case in which it does — the interval of 
time which elapses before even the same amount of revenue is received is 
very considerable." 

He thought that his noble friend (Lord John Russell) had given 
an ovenvhehning answer to the argument of the right hon. 
Baronet, and that the right hon. Baronet might be taken to be 
fairly ashamed of his own words, for on Friday he did not appea"* 
to recognize them as having fallen from his lips. The right hon. 
Baronet, on Friday, for the first time this Session, if he recol- 
lected rightly, bad returned again to the cry of last year, with 
regard to slavery ; and the right hon. Baronet had congratulated 
him upon his new-born zeal upon this subject; but when h°iknew 
that the proposition was for merely equalizing the duty upon sugar 
grown by the free people of India with that grown by the slave 
population of the West Indies, and which had met with the 
opposition of the right hon. Baronet when proposed by Mr. 
Whitmore, he could not but congratulate the right hon. Baronet 
on his new-formed anxiety in favour of the negroes. But without 
going into the argument of last year — whether or not any scruples 
existed with regard to slave-grown sugar or coffee — how was it 
possible for him, under existing circumstances, to think that the 
obiect of the right hon. Baronet was reasonable ? and he must 



100 ttfCOME TAX. 

confess that it required a strong effort of charity to believe the 
right lion. Baronet to be sincere. If he were to endeavour to 
find some reason why a reduction of the sugar duties was not 
proposed as one of the means at least of meeting the existing 
deficiency, he thought that he could discover it in the fact that, 
when last year it was determined that the late Government should 
give way, no more convenient or more popular mode of securing 
that object presented itself than that which might be derived from 
the existing feeling in opposition to negro slavery, and therefore it 
was that resolutions had been submitted to the House, drawn in 
terms which condemned the proposition of the Government wh.il 
regard to sugar, on the ground of philanthropy. The right hon. 
Baronet had turned out the late Government — he had a majority 
which upon that or any other point would have secured the same 
end. An outcry was raised, which, though in truth it was but 
the howl of an old slave-driver, succeeded at last, and the right 
hon. Baronet having come into power, after the vote of last year, 
he felt that his hands were tied — that he could not bring on any 
measure which should have for its effect the reduction of those 
duties, which he had before opposed on moral grounds, without 
exposing himself to the imputation of gross inconsistency. It was 
in order to sustain the consistency of the right hon. Baronet that 
the House was called upon to adopt, and the country to submit to 
an Income-tax. But when the right hon. Baronet was unable to 
find any reasons for the Income-tax, he made them. He pitched 
away the timber duties at once. For his own part, he believed 
that throwing away the timber duties was a greater financial 
misfortune than the disasters in Affghanistan. The throwing 
away the timber duties occasioned a loss of 600,000/. per annum ; 
he did not believe that 600,000/. per annum would be imposed 
for more than a short time, in consequence of what had taken 
place in India. But when the right hon. Baronet had thrown 
away this large branch of the public revenue of the country, he 



INCOME TAX. 101 

must say that he thought that instead of saying that he wa< 
imposing an Income-tax for the purpose of supplying the deficien 
cies of the public service, it would have been more correct for him 
to assert that he had increased the deficit, in order that he might 
have an excuse for imposing the Income-tax. These were the 
opinions which he held; he believed that this tax could be proved, 
and had been proved, to be one the imposition of which nothing 
but the greatest extremity could justify. He did not think that 
this country was in such a position of extremity ; he thought that 
the right hon. Baronet had exaggerated the financial difficulties ot 
the country — that he had brought into this discussion matters 
which were not connected with it, which had nothing to do with 
it when he formed the plan which he had brought forward ; that 
he had brought into it vague and mysterious hints of certain pos- 
sible expenses which might be hereafter incurred, but of the nature 
of which he had not given the House the slightest notion ; that 
he had given up the obvious means by which the position of our 
finances might have been improved — that he had enlarged the 
deficit by throwing away a source of revenue which would have 
materially tended to relieve the country from, the difficulties in 
which it was placed ; and under these circumstances, he should 
only discharge his duty by giving his vote in favour of the motion 
of his noble Friend. 



102 



TIIE MUTINY BILL.— FLOGGING IN THE ARMY.* 

apkil 15, 1842. 

Were he disposed to do so, tie, of all his late Colleagues in office, 
could vote with the most perfect consistency in favour of the 
motion of the hon. and gallant Member [Sir II. Hardinge], 
for durino' the time that he at least had held the office ol 
Secretary at War, the question of flogging in the army was 
never once mooted. But the question was one of those pecu- 
liarly painful topics of inquiry, and upon which the evidence was 
of so peculiar a nature, that noble Lords or right hon. Gentle- 
men who had held the office of Secretary at War, and who had 
obtained the information respecting it, which was only to be 
acquired in that post, had invariably been compelled by the facts 
which came to their knowledge, to take their share of the 
unpopularity which attached to its infliction, and at the hazard of 
losing their character for consistency to vote for its continuance, 
notwithstanding any former declarations against the practice. Tiie 
inquiry that had been instituted into the practice of flogging in 
the army had terminated in regulations that had confined the 
legal infliction of that punishment to as narrow a limit as was 
consistent with the safety of the discipline of the army. For his 
own part, he was disposed to say, that the actual infliction of 
floo-ofinp; ouo'ht to be confined to much narrower limits than even 
the law permitted ; but with the knowledge which he had acquired 
with respect to the facts attendant on this punishment, and after 
paving had the opportunity, which he had availed himself of 

* Hansard, 33 Series, vol. brii. p. 530-1, 



PLOgOino in the ArmV. 103 

during the period that ho was Secretary of War, of acquiring 
information on the subject, he must say, that he did not think the 
practice could with safety be relinquished. The only way to 
diminish the chances of its infliction was by elevating the morai 
character of the soldier, and by giving him intellectual enjoy- 
ments, which would tend to diminish the chances of his resorting 
to degrading or unsoldier-like habits or faults. As it was, he 
should vote against the motion of the hon. and gallant Member, 
and he should have done so, had it been brought forward last 
year. There was another question that had been incidentally 
mooted in the course of the observations of the hon. and gallant 
Member, which was the consistency that had been displayed by 
the hon. and gallant Member for Chippenham. The recollection 
which he had on the subject was not in accordance with the 
course which the hon. and gallant Member had expressed his 
intention to pursue on the present occasion; for, in referring to a 
record of the debate on this subject, which took place on the 
26th of March, 1838, he found the following words attributed 
to the hon. and gallant Member : 

"He (the hon. and gallant Member) called upon the House to abolish this 
barbarous and brutal torture, and to show to the continental nations that 
the British soldier could discharge his duty with equal fidelity under the 
impulse of more ennobling motives than that of terror." 

The hon, and gallant Member was here found exclaiming 
aoaiust the practice of floo-o-ino- in the armv, and calling upon the 
House to abolish a punishment so brutal and barbarous. He con- 
sidered those expressions to be more than equivalent to any vote 
that could have been given in favour of the motion, and the effect 
which he attributed to them was confirmed by the reply which 
the hon. and gallant Member made to the observations of the hon. 
Member for Lambeth, during the course of the debate on the 
same evening, wherein he had stated that he would, if he had the 



104 fflft&trtftd iff tnte AftMr 

power, abolish corporal punishment in the army altogether. 
Looking, therefore, at the very slight changes that had been made 
between the year 1836 and the year 1838, in the practice ol 
flogging in the array, he did not think the hon. ajid gallant 
Member was entitled to shelter himself from the charge of incon- 
sistency in the course which he pursued on the present occasion, 
however right and proper that course might be. 



105 



THE NATIONAL PETITION— THE CHARTER.* 

may 3, 1842. 

I am particularly desirous of saying a few words upon this question 
because upon a former evening, when a discussion took place upon 
a motion of the hon. Member for Rochdale, I was prevented from 
being in my place by accidental circumstances. 1 know that the 
absence of some of the Members of the late Government on that 
occasion, was considered and spoken of as exhibiting in their 
minds an inattention to this subject, or a want of sympathy for 
the interests of the humbler classes of the people of this country. 
For myself I can answer that I was compelled to absent myself 
on account of temporary indisposition ; a noble Friend of mine, 
to whose absence particular allusion was made, was prevented from 
attending the House by purely accidental circumstances ; and no one 
Member of the late Administration, I am persuaded, was withheld 
by any unworthy motives from stating his opinions upon this sub- 
ject. In the observations which I shall now make to the House, 
I shall attempt to imitate, as far as I can, the very proper temper 
of the speech of the right hon. Baronet the Secretary of State for 
the Home Department ; but if I should be betrayed into the use 
of any expressions not entirely consistent with a calm view of the 
question, the House will attribute it to the warmth with which I 
view the subject generally, and no one who is acquainted with my 
feelings will attribute it to any want of kindness or of good-will 
towards those who have signed the petition which has been pre- 
sented to the House. With regard to the motion which has been 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. Lxiii. p. 43-62. 
5* 



166 THE NATIONAL ViLiifibtf — TltE CHARTER. 

made, I cannot conscientiously vote for it. The hon. Member fo! 
Finsbury has shaped the motion with considerable skill, so as to give 
me a very fair plea to vote for it, if I wished to evade the discharge 
of my duty, so that I might say to my conservative constituents; 
"I never supported universal suffrage, or those extreme points for 
which these petitioners call ;" or to a large assembly of Chartists, 
44 When your case was before the House of Commons, on that 
occasion I voted with you." But I think that in a case so import- 
ant I should not discharge my duty if I had recourse to any such 
evasion, and I feel myself compelled to meet the motion with a 
direct negative ; and it seems to me that if we departed from our 
ordinary rule of not hearing persons at the Bar of this House 
under circumstances of this nature, it must be understood, by our 
adopting such a course, if not that we are decidedly favourable to 
the motion which is made, at least that we have not fully made 
up our minds to resist what the petitioners ask. For my own part, 
my mind is made up in opposition to their prayer, and, being so, 
I conceive that the House might complain of me, and that the 
petitioners also might complain of me, if I were to give an untrue 
impression of my views by voting in favour of this motion ; and I 
think that if I took such a course, and in three or four years hence 
I gave' a distinct negative to every one, or to the most important 
clauses of the charter, there would be much reason to complain 
of my disingenuousness. An accusation founded upon such 
grounds, I shall, if I can, prevent their bringing against me. In 
discussing this question I do not intend, as the hon. Member for 
Westminster has suggested, to deal with the contents of the peti- 
tion with any degree of harshness. To the terms of it I shall 
scarcely allude, but to the essence of it I must refer : and I cannot 
but see that what the petitioners demand is, that we should imme- 
diately, without alteration, deduction, or addition, pass the charter 
into a law; and when the hon. Member for Finsbury calls on the 
House to hear persons in support of the prayer of the petition at 



THE NATIONAL PETITION — THE CHARTER. 107 

the Bar, I say that if he can contend that the object of that 
inquiry will be to investigate the causes of public distress, by all 
means let the motion be carried — I will not oppose it. But when 
I see that the petitioners send to this House demanding that a 
particular law shall be passed, without addition, deduction, or modi- 
fication, and that immediately, and that they demand that persons 
shall be heard at the Bar of the House in favour of that law, 1 say 
that to allege that the only object of the inquiry is to ascertain the 
causes of public distress, is a paltering with the question, to which 
the House will pay no attention. There are parts of the charter 
to which I am favourable — for which I have voted, which I would 
always support; and in truth of all the six points of the charter 
there is only one to which I entertain extreme and unmitigated 
hostility. I have voted for the ballot. With regard to trie propo- 
sition that there be no property qualification required for Members 
in this House, I cordially agree, for I think that where there is a 
qualification of property required for the constituent body, a quali- 
fication for the representative is altogether superfluous. And it is 
absurd, that while the Members for Edinburgh and Glasgow are 
required to have no property qualification, the hon. Members for 
Marylebone or Finsburv must possess such a qualification. I sa\ 
that if the principle is to be adopted at all, let it be of universal 
application ; if it be not so, let it be abandoned. It is no part ot 
the constitution of the kingdom, that such a qualification should 
be required ; nor is it a part of the consequences of the revolu- 
tion ; but, after all, it was introduced by a bad Parliament, now 
held in no high esteem, and for the purpose of defeating the revo- 
lution, and excluding the Protestant succession to the crown. 
With regard to the other points of the Charter, T cannot support 
the proposition for annual Parliaments; but I should be willing 
to meet the wishes of the petitioners by limiting their duration to 
a shorter period than that for which thay may now endure. But 
I do not go the length of the Charter, because there is one point 



108 THE NATIONAL PETITION THE CHARTER. 

which is its essence, which is so important, that if you withhold it. 
nothing can produce the smallest effect in taking away the agita- 
tion which prevails, but which, if you grant, it matters not what 
else you grant, and that is, universal suffrage, or suffrage without 
any qualification of property at all. Considering that as by far 
the most important part of the Charter, and having a most decided 
opinion, that such a change would be utterly fatal to the country, 
I feel it my duty to say, that I cannot hold out the least hope that 
I shall ever, under any circumstances, support that change. The 
reasons for this opinion, I will state as shortly as T can. And, in 
the first place, I beg to say, that I entertain this view upon no 
ground of finality; indeed, the remarks which I have already 
made preclude such a supposition, but I do admit my belief, that 
violent and frequent changes in the Government of a country are 
not desirable. Every great change, I think, should be judged by 
its own merits. I am bound by no tie to oppose any legislative 
reform which I really believe will conduce to the public benefit; 
but I think that that which has been brought forward as an 
undoubted and conclusive argument against a change of this sort, 
that it is perfectly inconsistent with the continuance of the Monar- 
chy or of the House of Lords, has been much over-stated. And 
this I say, though I profess myself a most faithful subject to her 
Majesty, and by no means anxious to destroy the connection which 
exists between the Monarchy, the aristocracy, and the constitution, 
that I cannot, consider either the Monarchy or the aristocracy as, 
the end of Government, but only as its means. I know instances 
of governments with neither a hereditary monarchy nor aristocracy, 
yet flourishing and successful, and, therefore, I conceive this argu- 
ment to have been overstated. But I believe that universal suf- 
frage would be fatal to all purposes for which. government exists, 
and for which aristocracies and all other things exist, and that it 
is utterly incompatible with the very existence of civilization. I 
conceive that civilization rests on the security of property, but I 



THE NATIONAL PETITION — THE CHARTER. 100 

think that it is not necessary for me, in a discussion of this Hind, 
to go through the arguments, and through the vast experience 
which necessarily leads to this result; but I will assert, that while 
property is insecure, it is not in the power of the finest soil, or of 
the moral or intellectual constitution of any country, to prevent 
the country sinking into barbarism, while on the other hand, while 
property is secure, it is not possible to prevent a country from 
advancing in prosperity. Whatever progress this country has 
made, ih spite of all the mis-government which can possibly be 
imputed to it, it cannot but be seen how irresistible is the power 
of the great principle of security of property. Whatever may 
have been the state of war in which we were engaged, men were 
still found labouring to supply the deficiencies of the State; and 
if it be the fact, that all classes have the deepest interest in the 
security of property, I conceive, that this principle follows, that we 
never can, without absolute danger, entrust the supreme Govern- 
ment of the country to any class which would, to a moral certainty, 
be induced to commit great and systematic inroads against the 
sccuiiiy of property. I assume, that this will be the result of this 
motion — and I ask, whether the Government, being placed at the 
head of the majority of the people of this country, without any 
pecuniary qualification, they would continue to maintain the prin- 
ciple of the security of property? I think not. And if I am 
called upon to give a reason for this belief — not meaning to refer 
to the words of the petition with any harsh view — I will look to 
the petition to support what I have said. The petition must be 
considered as a sort of declaration of the intentions of the bodv, 
who, if the Charter is to become law, is to become the sovereign 
body of the State — as a declaration of the intentions of thc*se who 
would in that event return the majority of the representatives of 
the people to this House. If I am so to consider it, it is impossible 
for me to look at these words without the greatest anxiety: — 



110 THE NATIONAL PETITION THE CHARTER. 

" Your petitioners complain, that they are enormously taxed to pay th? 
interest of what is called the national debt — a debt amounting at present 
to £800,000.000 — being only a portion of the enormous amount expended 
in cruel and expensive wars for the suppression of all liberty, by men not 
aul horized by the people, and who consequently had no right to tax pos- 
terity for the outrages committed by them upon mankind." 

If I am really to understand that as an indication of the opinion 
of the petitioners, it is an expression of an opinion, that a national 
bankruptcy would be just and politic. If I am not so to under- 
stand it, I am utterly at a loss to know what it means. I conceive, 
for my own part, that it is impossible to make any distinction 
between the right of the fundholder to his dividends, and the right 
of the landholder to the rent for his land, and I say, that the 
author of this petition makes no such distinction, but treats 
all alike. The petitioners then speak of monopolies, and they 
say : — 

" Your petitioners deeply deplore the existence of any kind of monopoly 
in this nation ; and whilst they unequivocally condemn the levying of any 
tax upon the necessaries of life, and upon those articles principally re- 
quired by the labouring classes, they are also sensible, that the abolition 
of any one monopoly will never unshackle labour from its misery, until the 
people possess that power under which all monopoly and oppression must 
cease ; and your petitioners respectfully mention the existing monopolies 
of the suffrage, of paper money, of machinery, of land, of the public press, 
of religion, of the means of travelling and transit, and a host of other evils 
too numerous to mention, all arising from class-legislation." 

Now, I ask whether this is not a declaration of the opinion 
of the petitioners, that landed property should cease to exist? 
The monopoly of machinery, however, is also alluded to, and I 
suppose that will not be taken to refer to the monopoly of 
machinery alone, but the monopoly of property in general — a 
view which is confirmed when we further look to the complaint of 
the monopoly of the means of transit, Can it be any thing bat % 



THE NATIONAL PETITION — THE CHARTER. til 

confiscation of property — of the funds — and of land — %v hicli is 
contemplated ? And is it not further proposed, that there shall be 
a confiscation of the railways, also? I verilv believe, that that 
is the effect of the petition. What is the monopoly of machinery 
and land, which is to be remedied ? I believe, that it is hardly 
necessary for me to go into any further explanation, but if I under- 
stand this petition rightly, I believe it to contain a declaration, 
that the remedies for the evils of which it complains, and under 
which this country suffers, are to be found in a great and sweep- 
ing confiscation of property ; and I am firmly convinced, that the 
effect of any such measure would be not merely to overturn those 
institutions which now exist, and to ruin those who are rich 
but to make the poor poorer, and the amount of the misery of 
the country even greater, than it is now represented to be. I am 
far from bringing any charge against the great body who have 
signed this petition. As far am I from approving of the con- 
duct of those who, in procuring the petition to be signed, have 
put the sentiments which it embodies into a bad and pernicious 
form. I ask, however, are we to go out of the ordinary course 
of Parliamentary proceedings, for the purpose of giving it recep- 
tion. I believe, that nothing is more natural than that the 
feelings of the people should be such as they are described to 
be. Even we ourselves, with all our advantages of education, 
when we are tried by the temporary pressure of circumstances, 
are too ready to catch at every thing which may hold out the 
hope of relief — to incur a greater evil in future, which may 
afford the means of present indulgence; and I cannot but see, 
that a man having a wife at home to whom he is attached, 
growing thinner every day, children whose wants become every 
day more pressing, whose mind is principally employed in me 
chauical toil, may have been driven to entertain such views as 
are here expressed, partly from his own position, and partly 
from the culpable neglect of the Government in omitting to 



H2 *HE NATIONAL PETITION — TttE CHARTER. 

supply him with the means and the power of forming a better 
judgment. Let us grant that education would remedy these 
things, shall we not wait until it has done so, before we agree 
to such a motion as this; shall we, before such a charge is 
wanted, give them the power and the means of ruining not only 
the rich but themselves? I have no more unkind feeling to- 
wards these petitioners than I have towards the sick man, who 
calls for a draught of cold water, although he is satisfied tha 
it would be death to him ; nor than I have for the poor In 
dians, whom I have seen collected round the granaries in Indis 
at a time of scarcity, praying that the doors might be thrown 
open, and the grain distributed ; but I would not in the one 
case give the draught of water, nor would I in the other give 
the key of the granary ; because I know that by doing so I 
shall only make a scarcity a famine, and by giving such relief, 
enormously increase the evil. No one can say that such a spo- 
liation of property as these petitioners point at would be a relief 
to the evils of which they complain, and 1 believe that no one will 
deny, that it would be a great addition to the mischief which is pro- 
posed to be removed. But if such would be the result, why should 
such power be conferred upon the petitioners? That they should 
ask for it is not blamable ; but on what principle is it that 
we, knowing that their views are entirely delusive, should put 
into their hands the irresistible power of doing all this evil to 
us, and to themselves ? The only argument which can be brought 
forward in favour of the proposition is, as it appears to me, 
that this course, which is demanded to be left open to the 
petitioners, will not be taken ; that although the power is given, 
they will not, and do not intend to execute it. But surely this 
would be an extraordinary way of treating the prayer of the 
petition ; and it would be somewhat singular to call upon the 
House to suppose that those who are seeking for a great conces- 
sion put the obiect of their demand in a much higher manner than 



THE NATIONAL PETITION — TttE CttAtlTER. 113 

that which presented itself to their own mind?. How is it possible 
that according to the principles of human nature, if yon give them 
this power, it would not be used to its fullest extent? There has 
been a constant and systematic attempt for years to represent the 
Government as being able to do, and as bound to attempt that 
which no Government ever attempted ; and instead of the Govern- 
ment being represented, as is the truth, as being supported by tlie 
people, it has been treated as if the Government supported the 
people; it has been treated as if the Government possessed some 
mine of wealth — some extraordinary means of supplying the wants 
of the people; as if they could give them bread from the clouds 
— water from the rocks — to increase the bread and the fishes five 
thousandfold. Is it possible to believe that the moment you give 
them absolute, supreme, irresistible power, they will forget all this? 
You propose to give them supreme power; in every constituent 
body throughout the empire capital and accumulated property is to 
be placed absolutely at the foot of labour. How is it possible to 
doubt what the result will be? Suppose such men as the hon. 
Members for Bath and Rochdale being returned to sit in this House, 
who would, I believe, oppose such measures of extreme change as 
would involve a national bankruptcy, what would be the effect 
if their first answer to their constituents should be, " Justice and the 
public good demand that this thirty millions a-year should be paid V s 
Then, with regard to land, supposing it should be determined that 
there should be no partition of land, and it is hardly possible to 
conceive that there are men to be found who would destroy all the 
means of creating and increasing wages, and of creating and in- 
creasing the trade and commerce of this country, which gives 
employment to so many ! Is it possible that the three millions o. 
people who have petitioned this House should insist on the prayei 
of their petition? I do not wish to say all that forces itself on 
my mind with regard to what might be the result of our granting 
the Charter. Let us, if we can, picture to ourselves the cons<? 



114 THE NATIONAL PETITION-^-TIIE CHARTER. 

quences of such a spoliation as it is proposed should take place, 
Would it end with one spoliation ? How could it ? That distress 
which is the motive now for calling on this House to interfere, 
would be only doubled and trebled by the act; the measure of 
distress would become greater after that spoliation, and the bul- 
warks against fresh acts of the same character would have been 
removed. The Government would rest upon spoliation — all the pro- 
perty which any man possessed would be supported by it, and is it 
possible to suppose that a new state of things would exist wherein 
every thing that was done would be right? "What must be the 
effect of such a sweeping confiscation of property ? No experi- 
ence enables us to guess at it. All I can say is, that it seems to 
me to be something more horrid than can be imagined. A great 
community of human beings — a vast people would be called into 
existence in a new position ; there would be a depression, if not 
an utter stoppage, of trade, and of all those vast engagements 01 
the country by which our people were supported, and how is it 
possible to doubt that famine and pestilence would come before 
long to wind up the effects of such a system ? The best thing 
which I can expect, and which I think every one must see as the 
result, is, that in some of the desperate struggles which must take 
place in such a state of things, some strong military despot must 
arise, and give some sort of protection — some security to the pro- 
perty which may remain. But if you flatter yourselves that 
after such an occurrence vou would ever see again those institutions 
under which you have lived, you deceive yourselves; you would 
never see them again, and you would never deserve to see them. 
By all neighbouring nations you would be viewed with utter con- 
tempt, and that glory and prosperity which has been so envied 
would be sneered at, and your fate would thus be told: " England,'' 
it would be said, "had her institutions, imperfect though they 
were, but which contained within themselves the means of remedy- 
ing all imperfections. Those institutions were wantonly thrown 



THE NATIONAL PETITION THE CHARTER. 115 

awav for no purpose whatever, but because she was asked to ck so 
by persons who sought her ruin ; her ruin was the consequence ; 
and she deserves it." Believing this, I will oppose with eveiy 
faculty which I possess the proposition for universal suffrage. The 
only question is, whether this motion should be agreed to. Now, 
if there is any gentleman who is disposed to grant universal suf- 
frage, with a full view of all its consequences, I think that he acts 
perfectly conscientiously in voting for this motion ; but 1 must 
say, that it was with some surprise I heard the hou. Baronet the 
Member for Leicester, agreeing with me as he does in the principles 
which I advocate, say, notwithstanding, that he is disposed to vote 
simply for the motion for permitting these petitioners to come to 
our Bar to speak in defence of their petition. [Sir J. East-hope. 
To expound their opinions.] I conceive their opinions are quite 
sufficiently expounded. They are of such an extent that I cannot, 
I must confess, pretend to speak of tbem with much respect. I 
shall give on this occasion a perfectly conscientious vote against 
hearing the petitioners at the Bar; and it is my firm conviction 
that in doing so I am not only doing that which is best with 
respect to the State, but that I am really giving to the petitioners 
themselves much less reason for complaining than those who vote 
for their being heard now, but who will afterwards vote a^aius! 
their demand. 



116 



SUNDAY TRAVELLING ON RAILWAYS* 

june 18, 1842. 

He was strongly opposed to any further legislation with respect to 
Sunday travelling. Why, he would ask, should one mode of tra- 
velling be prohibited and others allowed, when that mode caused 
the least exertion and required the least portion of human labour? 
Were they to legislate in this way because an unfortunate accident 
had taken place on a Sunday on a railroad ? Such an attempt at 
argument to reconcile them to such a proceeding was more extra- 
vagant than any schoolboy argument that he had ever heard. But 
what was the mode of procedure the hon. Gentleman [Mr. 
Plumptre] wished to resort to, to enforce his proposed clause ? He 
found that at present there were many prohibitions against per- 
forming certain acts on the Sunday. But how were these enforced 
Why by penalties in each case. In the present case the hon. 
Member, if he wished to make his clause operative in this respect, 
might have proposed that a fine of 51. should be levied ; for it was 
obvious that all laws of this kind must be perfectly nugatory with- 
out the enforcing the payment of some penalty on one party or the 
other. This clause, however, not only contained no penalty, but it 
did not mention any party who was to be responsible for a breach 
of the law. He would defy the hon. Member or any one else, by 
such a motion or clause, to put a stop to railway travelling on 
Sunday. There might be a penalty of 1,000/. for each offence 
imposed in such a clause as the hon. Member had proposed, but 
how was it possible to enforce it ? But the clause, however, w^s 

♦ Hansard, 3d Series, vol. briv. |>. 183-185. 



8UNDAV TUAYKLUXO oy RAILWAYS. 11? 

Open to objections of another nature. Th ■ ii m. Member proposed 
as an exception, that nothing in bhw act contained shall extend 
to prohibit tiic use of any railway rill the Lord's Day in cases of 
charity or necessity. Now he. should like to know who was to 
be the judge of these cases of necessity or charity. Was it for 
thr- committee seriously to entertain so futile and childish a pro- 
position ? And were they not to know what, court the hon. Mem- 
ber proposed should try these questions of charity or necessity? 
Again, were the travellers to be made answerable, or were the 
proprietors of the railroad? Suppose the hon. Member went to 
the Birmingham Railway station, and said that he wanted to 
leave by a train on a matter of urgent necessity ; how were the 
railway people to determine upon a case of the kind? He would 
venture to say, that the people of this country would not bear 
the operation of such a monstrous and absurd piece of legislation 
for a single day. Now what test was there to be for a work of charity 
or necessity? Every man would put a different interpretation 
on a matter of this kind. Suppose, for instance, a man heard on 
a Sunday that his daughter had just eloped from a boarding- 
school at Bath, might he not say that this was a case of ne- 
cessity to look after his family on a Sunday, while others migh: 
tell him that he mio-ht wait till the Monday ? A case of rather ar 
extraordinary kind, having reference to this subject, came undet 
his cognizance a few years ago. He recollected that in Decem- 
bei 1825, having seen a gentleman o? the greatest piety, and 
who entertained the strictest notions as to the observance of the 
Sunday, getting out of a stage-coach from a distant part of the 
country in which he resided, on a Sunday evening; on imme- 
diately expressing his surprise at seeing him, knowing as he did 
the strictly conscientious opinion that he entertained as to tra- 
velling on a Sunday, this gentleman, who, by the by, was a 
country banker, told him that he was compelled to travel as a 
work of necessity, namely, to get a supply of money to meet the 



ii$ SUNDAY TaAVELfJK'G ON RAltWAfS. 

panic. Now who was to determine whether that was a case o\ 
necessity or not, within the meaning of the clause? What tribu- 
nal was to decide the question ? In such cases it would not be 
possible to lay a penalty on the travellers, and still more absurd 
was it to propose to lay a penalty on the railroads, for the agents 
or the servants of the railway company could only judge of the 
travelling being a work of charity or necessity by what the tra- 
vellers told them. Or, woniJd the hon. Gentleman propose that a 
committee of directors of each railway should sit in each station- 
house, to determine, in the case of each traveller, as to whether it 
was a case of necessity or charity ? Such a clause could only be 
regarded as a monstrous waste of words, and it never would a: tain 
the object the hon. Member had in view. If there was any pro- 
position made to restrain further Sunday travelling, he should 
oppose it to the utmost ; but he objected to the adoption of this 
clause, because he thought that the House would be placed in a 
most ludicrous situation by adopting so extravagant and monstrous 
a proposition. 



119 



LORD ELLENBOROUGH'S PROCLAMATIONS— 
SOMNAUT1I.* 

MARCH 9, 1843. 

If, Sir, the practice of the lion. Member had agreed with his pre- 
cepts — if he had confined his observations in this House to the 
particular subject under discussion — I should have strictly followed 
his example, conceiving that there is abundance, indeed, to be said 
both' as to the matter and the manner of tin proclamation ; nor, 
Sir, will I suffer myself, by the peroration he has made, to be led 
away to any great distance, or for any long time, from the impor- 
tant question which is now before us. Yet I cannot regret that 
the hon. Gentleman, who has this night exhibited, as he has done 
on former occasions, proofs of no small stock of ability and acutc- 
ness, should have complained that this charge was brought against 
his right hon. Friend, the Governor-General, in his absence. Is 
this House, Sir, interdicted from considering the conduct of a 
Governor-General who is absent? Why, Sir, how are we to 
attempt to criticise his conduct, if we may not do it in his 
absence ? For my own part, 1 may say for myself, and I may 
truly say for my right hon. Friend near me, that we both would 
have wished with our whole souls that we could have discussed 
this question in the presence of the Governor-General. And 
permit me to say, that if there be any public man — if there be 
any Governor-General, who has no right to complain of any 
remarks in his absence, it is that Governor-General, the first 
Governor-General who has borne that high station, who hap 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol Uvii. p. 613-628* 



-jU LORD ELLENBOROUGH S PROCLAMATIONS — SOMNAUTH. 

employed his power to place a stigma upon the character, and to 
bring a charge against his predecessor in his absence; that 
Governor-General who has been the first to forget all official 
decency — who was the first to forget that rule of unity in fhe 
state which should have prevented him from placing a stigma 
upon the conduct of the Governor-General, of whom I will say 
this — and this only, that whatever may have been his faults in 
other respects, he was faultless with respect to Lord Ellenborough. 
I am sure, Sir, that no hon. Gentleman will rise on the other side 
of the House and will deny my assertion that no Governor- 
General ever exerted himself more strenuously or more effectually 
to leave to the Governor-General who should come after him all 
the facilities in his power, or to contribute more earnestly to his 
success. If his successor had been his own brother, it was impos- 
sible that my Lord Auckland could have laboured more to give 
him every advantage. And what was his requital ? A proclama- 
tion from that successor, published in his absence, stigmatizing the 
whole of his predecessor's conduct. But since our attention has 
been called by the hon. Gentleman from the proclamation now 
under discussion — since it has been said that it was a mere 
calumny to say that the orders for the withdrawal of the troops 
were given before the fate of the prisoners was known, or to assert 
that the Govern or«General was indifferent to the fate of the pri- 
soners — permit me to ask the hon. Gentleman, or the hon. 
Director who sits behind him, to explain one point which it 
appears to me most important to resolve. I promise them I will 
be very concise in the question I will put. When my Lord Ellen- 
borough put his hand to the proclamation of the 1st October, 
1842, did he, or did he not know that the prisoners were then in 
safety ? That on the 1st of October the Governor-General did not 
know that the prisoners were safe I am certain, What defence, 
then, is offered for this proclamation ? Even this, that the procla- 
mation itself bears a false date — that it was not framed on the 1st 



LORD ELLENBOROUGIi's PROCLAMATIONS — SOMNAUTH. 121 

<>f October. That the date of the 1st of October was inserted I 
believe, and I shall be glad to hear it contradicted, though I doubt 
whether any lion. Gentleman will venture, on his own knowledge, 
to contradict the statement. I believe that my Lord EllenbordUffh 
placed to that proclamation the false date of the 1st of October, 
because my Lord Auckland's manifesto against Afghanistan was 
dated on the 1st of October, 1838. The false day was put for 
the sake of so paltry and so contemptible a triumph. That act, I 
say, indicates an intemperate mind, unfit for so high a trust; for 
the sake of a paltry triumph over his predecessor, a date is put to 
the proclamation which makes it appear that he and the English 
Government were perfectly indifferent to the fate of the prisoners 
For the effect of such a proclamation among the natives of India 
must be — the general impression of Lord Ellenborough, with 
respect to that order, must be — that he, and the Government 
which appointed him, were utterly regardless of the fate of the 
prisoners — and, Sir, I believe that my Lord Ellenborough ren- 
dered himself liable to this imputation by inserting a date which 
might appear as an attack upon my Lord Auckland. That, Sir, 
is not the only subject on which \ might touch, if I chose to 
follow the hon. Gentleman into a debate on larger matters, and 
unconnected with the subject more immediately before us. I 
might call to the attention of the House the conduct of the 
Governor-General towards the Civil Service in India, the spirit of 
which I fear may be broken by his treatment. I might talk to 
the House of the financial commission issued by the noble Lord 
to find out the blunders of his predecessor, and which ended only 
in finding out blunders of his own. But, Sir, I conceive that the 
present subject, both on the serious and ludicrous side of the 
question, ought to occupy all our attention. And first as to the 
Berious side. I abjure at once all intention, and every wish, to 
raise any fanatical outcry, or lend my aid to any fanatical progress. 
I solemnly declare that I would at any time rather be the victim 
YOU Uf 



LORD ELLENBO ROUGH S PROCLAMATIONS 80MNAUTJI. 

than the tool of fanaticism ; and that if the conduct of Lord 
Ellenborougk were called in question for using* strict toleration 
towards ail religions, or for any reprobation of the misguided zeal 
of Christian missionaries, I would, notwithstanding any political 
differences between us, be the first to stand forward in his defence. 
This, however, is not the case. It is all verv well for the hon, 
Gentleman to say that we look at small and trivial errors. This I 
deny. This is no light thing. We are the governors of a larger 
heathen population than (with one exception) I believe the world 
ever knew collected under one sceptre since the first Christian 
epoch. It is, Sir, no light matter to say what the policy of a 
Christian Government should be in such circumstances. It is a 
serious and a grave question in morals and in government. 
However weak we might have been when we first went to India, 
we now find subject to our sway there 100,000,000 of souls not 
professing the Christian faith, a large portion of whom are Mus- 
sulmans — they are a minority, but a minority reckoned by tens of 
millions; they are a more united, but they are also a more fana- 
tical body than the majority ; they are accustomed to unite, they 
are used to war, they show a higher spirit than the majority, but 
in general they are more untraceable and more fierce. Mingled 
with them are many, many millions of idolators. Many are 
inordinately influenced by the forms of their superstition, of which 
it is impossible for any person who values even their temporal 
interest to speak without the deepest and most serious considera- 
tion. I believe, Sir, that in no part of the world is there a super- 
stition more unfavourable to the advancement of knowledge and 
of civilization. There are many fables, the very believing of 
which produces the utmost degradation of the mind, bound up 
with thms false notions ; rnar-v errors and prejudices in reference 
to physical subjects are connected with their distinct and odiou§ 
belief, raising great ami almost insuperable obstacles to th§ 
%&¥$$<& of science. Th§re m symbolical badges teaching them 



LOttD ELLENBOROUGIl's PROCLAMATIONS SOMN'AtTTH. ] 23 

a kind of worship which 1 will not mention : their very forms of 
worship are connected with the worst forms of prostitution. There 
is a great and deplorable degradation of the female races. And, 
Sir, when we have said all this, we have not said the worst. The 
most fatal uimes against religion and against property are closeh 
allied to the religion they uphold : they offer up human sacrifices 
to their deities ; they have still their inhuman Suttee, by which 
the widow is sacrificed by her own children. Even the atrocious 
practice of the Thugs is carried on notoriously under the apparent 
direction of thdr divinities. During my stay in India I read the 
examination o* two Thugs, where one reprimanded his brother for 
letting off' w'Vi ' is life a traveller who had fallen into their power, 
saying :— 

" How can you expect our goddess to protect us, if you thus spare tho 
life of the traveller you have taken ?" 

Where, Sir, we find a religion of this sort, it is an extremely 
difficult problem to be solved in what way a Christian Govern- 
ment should deal with a people holding such a religion or such a 
faith. We might have attempted the policy which was of old 
adopted by Spain : we might have attempted to convert this 
heathen people to our own faith. We might have attempted a 
large scheme of proselytism ; but, in my opinion, the English 
Government have acted more wisely : they have not adopted any 
system of proselytism ; at the same time we have not imposed 
any civil disabilities on any native of India, let him hold whatever 
faith he may ; and the very last act concerning the charter of the 
East India Company declares that no native, let his religious, 
opinion be what it may, shall be incapable of holding any situa- 
tion under Government. Although we have not done anything 
to put down their religion, and although in this we have acted 
most wisely, yet, Sir, I am not sure that for some time a most 
dangerous and pernicious leaning has not been exhibited the othef 



324 LORD ELLENBORGUGh's PROCLAMATIONS SOMNAUTH. 

way — I believe that we have done much to make the idolati oils- 
practices a matter of national reverence. We long looked with 
jealousy on the labours of the Christian missionaries who went to 
India, we long looked too severely on the conduct of those whose 
labours were of no slight value ; we tolerated too long the human 
sacrifice, we allowed too long the degrading practice of the 
Suttee, which might have been put down long ago were it not for 
our toleration. I believe that we made no attempt to protect the 
persons or property of our fellow-creatures and our subjects 
against the demands of superstition. As far, too, as related to a 
great part of their idolatrous processions, anc 1 to + iie decoration of 
their temples, we lent our aid ; we sent, under our escort, the 
native chiefs on their way to worship at those temples ; and we 
thus marked our support of an idolatrous worship. We might 
have had an object in all this. I think it undignified, even if it 
were not, under all considerations, most inexpedient in a temporal 
point of view, and as a temporal matter alone will I be tempted 
to discuss it. The inevitable effect on the people of India was to 
make them believe that we attached no importance $t- the vast 
distinction between that religion, every work of which hss always 
been beyond all other religions, to advance knowledge and 
learning, to widen the field of domestic happiness, to promote fxd 
secure public and personal liberty, which in the old vo~ld has 
struck off the chains of slavery, which has everywhere raised the 
condition of woman, and assuaged the horrors of war; and that 
other religion, which we cannot sanction or support without com- 
mitting an act of treason against civilisation and against humanity, 
Gradually, however, a system has been introduced which every 
one who is aware of the state of India will admit to be of con 
siderable importance, and without meaning to say it amounts to 
absolute perfection, I am not aware that at the present moment 
the rules laid down by the Home Government for the conduct of 
our Indian authorities admit of any considerable improvement. 



tORD ELLENBOROUGH*S PROCLAMATIONS — SOMNAUTH. l'2o 

I think it was my Lord Weilesley who led the way and abolished 
the immolation of female children, and great as is the title of 
that eminent statesman to the gratitude of his country, this was 
one of the proudest of the claims which his friends and those 
who regret his loss will rejoice to acknowledge. In the year 1813 
the restriction on the admission of missionaries was abolished : 
a clause was inserted in the charter which defeated that restric- 
tion. x\t a later period, Sir, Lord W. Bentinck abolished the 
Suttee. An order was also sent out by the Government at home 
on the subject of the pilgrim-tax. Lord Glenelg — I was in oflice 
at the time, and I know the fact — Lord Glenelg, with his own 
hand, wrote that most important and valuable despatch of 
February, 1833, to which such frequent reference has been made. 
In that despatch — and I recollect it so well, that I can almost state 
with precision the paragraph, and quote its substance, almost its 
exact words — in the 62nd paragraph of that despatch will be 
found a complete system — I might call it of legislation — but a 
code of conduct for the Indian authorities. It directed, that all 
matters whatever, relating to temples and to idols, are to be left 
entirely to the natives themselves to aci. This order was to be 
acted upon by the Indian authorities, who were to use their best 
discretion in introducing it. Its operation was left, as it neces- 
sarily must be, to the Indinn authorities. Again, there was in the 
year 1838 another despatch, which recognised the 62nd paragraph 
of the despatch of 1833, which pointed out its importance, and 
the intention of the directors to carry it out. Again in the year 
1841 orders upon this subject were sent out, which were so 
framed that lam almost led to believe that mv Lord Ellenborouoh 
had read them carefully through for the express purpose of dis- 
obeying them as far as he could. Orders positive and distinct 
were given to the Indian authorities by this despatch to have 
nothing to do with the national temples of the idols; positive 
and distinct orders to make no presents to these temples ; positive 



126 LORO ELLENBOilOl fill's PROCLAMATIONS SOMNAUTH. 

and distinct orders to give no decorations to those temples, posi- 
tive and distinct orders to employ no troops to do honour to tin.' 
worship of these idols. Tins despatch was sent out by the Court 
of Directors in the year 1841, and I think while that despatch is 
acted upon, onr own religion is held sacred, whilst all possible 
toleration is given to the professors of different religions To 
attempt to convert that toleration into a direct approval appears to 
me to be a crime, and directly opposed to the reasonings and the 
intentions of individuals of the best information with respect to 
India, and far better qualified than the Governor-General to form 
a correct opinion. It was the intention of the Government rigidly 
to preserve wise neutrality. I come, then, to the charge against 
Lord Ellenborough : it is, that he has departed from that neu- 
trality ; it is, that he has disobeyed the orders of those from whom 
his power is derived, and to whom his obedience is due. That is the 
first part of the charge, but it is not the greatest or the heaviest. 
Is it denied that my Lord Ellenborough assisted in the decorations 
of these idolatrous temples ? Is it denied that he interfered with 
their concerns ? Is it denied that he made them gifts ? Why, the 
only argument of the lion. Gentleman opposite is, that as my Lord 
Ellenborough sent the troops to escort the gates, he had not inter- 
fered in any religious way, because the directors had ordered him 
not to give any encouragement to idolatry. That was a strange 
mode of proving, that Lord Ellenborough had not disobeyed the 
orders of the directors. Undoubtedly, if the first principle of oni 
reasoning is to be, that my Lord Ellenborough is a perfect man — 
if the first principle is to be, that he cannot possibly do any 
wrong — why then I fully admit the force of the hon. Gentleman's 
argument. But, Sir, can it be seriously denied, that Lord Ellen- 
borough did send the troops to carry these gates from a Maho- 
metan mosque to a Hindoo temple, and place them on the 
restored temple of Somnauth ? [Cheers.] Aye, the restored 
temple ! [fieneived Cheers.] Let us understand that word, 



LORD ELLtiNBOUOl Gil's PROCLAMATIONS — SOMNACTH. 12*i 

restored. We all know that the temple is in ruins. How is it 
possible to doubt that my Lord ElleubpjViMigh, before he deter- 
mined to issue that important proclamation, did not know that 
the temple was in ruins, or that he did not ask of those about 
him, and who knew the state of that temple ? If the lion. Gen 
tleman will seriously stand up and say he believes that my Lord 
Ellenborough wrote that despatch without asking a question of 
those around him — if such were really his conduct, the hon. Gen- 
tleman by stating it, would pronounce upon it the severest con- 
demnation. It is clear, Sir, that his Lordship, if he did not know 
the fact, did inquire into the state of the temple, and that he was 
told that it was in ruins. And what did his Lordship say ? He 
calls it the restored temple. It is impossible ,c c'oubt that ik 
intended its restoration before he should set up the gates in :., 1 
defy the hon. Gentleman — I defy all human ingenuity — to gjt, off 
one of the two horns of the dilemma. Either way it will settle 
this question. Either his Lordship did publish his prociai : i'.ion 
without making inquiry or knowing of himself that the ^.nple. 
was in ruins; or, having been told that it was, he determined that 
it should be restored. Turn and twist it which way you will, you 
can make nothing else of it. It is like the stain on the key, ir 
ihe story of " Bluebeard ;" if you can clean it on one side, the 
spot springs up on the other. Here, then, is direct disobedience to 
the orders of the Court of Directors, and that is the first charge 
which I bring against my Lord Ellenborough. It is not, however, 
the chief or the most important. I come now to the duty of an 
English governor, supposing that the Court of Directors should 
not have given him any directions, and supposing that he had not 
violated any such instructions. Lord Ellenborough has not a 
mind so contracted as not tc know the difference between the 
temporal effects — for I mean to speak only of these— and the 
civil effects of a religion like that of his countrymen, and a 
religion like timt which exists among the idolater* of India. It 



11:8 LOUD ELLENBOROUGII*8 PROCLAMATION SOMNAUTH. 

was clearly his duty to pay no homage to any native religion iri 
that country, and to offer no insult to any. But, Sir, he has paid 
that homage, and he has offered that insult, and more than that. 
Not only has this homage been paid and this insult offered, but i-t 
has been done in the worst possible manner. We might have 
looked with some sort of favour on his Lordship's acts and inten- 
sions, it might have been some mitigation of those insults if they 
had been offered to the most degrading and most corrupting of 
all forms of worship, and if the homage had been paid to some 
reasonable and salutary doctrine. But the fact was just the 
reverse. "Lis Lordship took the worst possible way of deviating 
from 'Sue required neutrality in the orders which he issued. He 
deviated from his proper course in the wrong direction ; he offered 
an insult to u ruth ; and he paid homage to the most vicious false- 
hood. Yu -u not an insult to truth? To what religion is it that 
the offering was made ? It was to Lingamism — to a religion 
which is polytheism in its worst form, which in its natui'3 presents 
A .he most degrading, the most odious, the most polluted represen- 
tation of the Supreme Being. It is to that doctrine, which more 
f:-:n any other is fundamental to everything in the Hindoo reli- 
gion, and it is in violation of all those principles which we are 
taugat to consider as the mainspring of Christianity. And what 
is this temple which my Lord Ellenborough means to restore ? 
The hon. Gentleman who last spoke seemed to think that he had 
achieved a great victory when he made out that the offering was 
not made to Siva, but to Krishna. Krishna is the preserving 
deity, and Siva the destroying deity, and, as far as one can ven- 
ture to express any preference for these false gods, I confess that 
my own tastes would lead me to admire rather the preserving 
than the destroying power. But the temple was consecrated to 
Siva, not to Krishna, and the hon. Gentleman must know what 
were the rites — what were the emblems of the worship of Siva — 
what were the dreadful scenes enacted in this very temple of 



LORD RI.LICXBOHOl'Grrs PROCLAMATIONS SOMNAUTH. 120 

Somnauth. Why, in speaking- in this House of those, scenes, we 
are ashaimd to d<sscribe things which the Governor-General is not 
ashamed by his proclamation to promote. Now this, I must say, 
is a great and serious wrong. Lord Ellenborough proposes the 
restoration of this temple, and I defy any one to put any other 
meaning on his words. Well, I have spoken of the moral conse- 
quences of this proclamation, and I will now come to the question 
of its political effects. On that point I agree in every syllable 
which has fallen from my right hon. Friend. I am convinced 
that the first effect of this will be, and I have strong reason to 
believe that that effect has already in some degree arisen, that 
amongst the Mahometans the most violent feelings of indignation 
will be excited. We know their feelings, and we know that by 
the Mahometans this will be thought one of the greatest outrages 
to their religion. We require for this proposition no better, and 
could have no stronger authority than that of Mr. Elphinstone. 
We know what have been the consequences, and what serious 
internal perils have arisen from former supposed outrages on the 
Mahometan religion. We need only remember the occurrences at 
Vellore and at Bangalore. In the first case outrages of an 
extraordinary description arose from a supposed disrespect being 
shown to the Mussulman turban ; in the latter, similar scenes were 
enacted from some alleged disrespect to a Mussulman mosque. It 
is no light thing to commit such acts as this. I have reason to 
believe, and the house will agree with me that my belief is not 
without foundation — that there is a party of the Hindoos who 
look with great and eager joy at this proclamation, and the con- 
sequences which may be anticipated from it. They are elated 
with delight at this event, and they look upon it as a certain 
proof of the intention of the English Government to take them 
and their religion under its protection, and that some great victory 
of Brahma is about to be achieved. But does the Government 
mean to answer these expectations ? jj oes the right hop. Baronet 



130 LOKD ELLENBOROUGH S PROCLAMATIONS SOMNAUTH* 

opposite mean to adopt Brahminical principles in the government 
of India ? If not, I say that these great hopes must be disap- 
pointed, and the disappointment, consequent upon the continuance 
of those principles by which the Government is now actuated, 
must inevitably be followed by resentment and anger. And I do 
not know whether I could apply to the question a fairer test than 
this ; and I beg to call on the members of her Majesty's Govern- 
ment just to state to us what they mean to do about this part of 
the case. Do they mean to cany into effect the promises held 
out in the proclamation ? Do they mean to authorize the 
Governor-General to restore the temple of Somnauth ? Is the 
public revenue to be expended in creating a new place for the 
worship of the idols of the Hindoos — in erecting a new shrine for 
the exhibition of the revolting spectacles which have in former 
ages disgraced the locality of this temple — in hiring fresh hordes 
of dancing girls to do honour to the gods of idolatry. I have no 
possible doubt that Lord Ellenborough will receive, in some form 
or another, such an admonition as will prevent his incurring the 
odium consequent upon the adoption of such steps. What then 
will occur ? The whole tide of popularity which has been gained by 
this proclamation among the Hindoos will be stopped — the Hindoo 
population, which will have been looking forward to this consum- 
mation of their hopes, will find that those hopes have been raised 
only to be disappointed. But, even if this be not so — if these 
effects be not produced — is it nothing, I ask, to have this continual 
turning and wavering in a government like that of India i This is 
not the only proclamation which Lord Ellenborough has put 
forth. He put forth another, which contained an announcement 
that Dost Mohammed was coming to his Durbar, and then, m 
another, he contradicted this statement. And to this is to be 
added this new proclamation put forth with great pomp, pro- 
mising the chiefs and princes of India, that something is to be 
done wbicfc cannot be done, because the Governor-General is 



Lord ellenbokoi gh s proclamations --soMNAtrni. J3i 

opposed by the Government at home. By force of their superiot 
authority he will be compelled to submit to the humiliating- neces- 
sity of abandoning his promise. This, I say, is no light matter. 
It is a most serious thing to contemplate the feelings with which, 
so far as I can learn, the native population of India will be led to 
regard the noble Lord. We have had Governors-General of India 
v.." various stamps. Some Governors-General there have been who 
have been guilty of faults; some who have even committed 
crimes ; the natives in some cases have hated the Governor 
General, but now, for the first time, they have a Governoi -General 
whom they laugh at. , And how are we to blame the natives of 
India laughing at what is occurring under their own -mmadiate 
observation ; when all Europe, and all America are laughing Loo ? 
Was there ever anything which more justly excited ridicule? 
And what is the defence which is set up ? The hon. Gentleman 
opposite produces some turgid eastern papers, full of brilliant 
tropes and flowing figures, to show that this proclamation is 
couched in the terms in which documents in former times weie 
sometimes couched by native princes. But is that a parallel case ? 
May it not as well be said that it was fit that the noble Lord 
should allow his beard to o-row down to his waist — that he should 
attire himself in the Eastern costume — that he should hang about 
his person jewels and glittering ornaments, and that he should 
ride through the streets of Calcutta upon a horse gaily capari- 
soned, and ornamented with jingling bells and glass beads, and all 
the showy paraphernalia of the native princes ? When the 
natives see a nabob or a rajah indulge himself in these luxuries, 
they bow to him, and take the splendour of his appearance to b6 
indicative, as it is, of his rank, his power, and his wealth ; but if 
Sir Charles Metcalfe had so bedizened himself, I am inclined to 
think that it would have been concluded, and not without reason, 
that he was out of his wits. !>epend upon it the natives are not 
such fcols as they are taken for, It is a mistake to imagine that 



1S2 tORD ELtfiNBOROUGH*S PROCLAMATIONS SOMttAtJlH. 

they do not understand the respect which is due to the peculiai 
simplicity and solemnity of our habits and manners. The con- 
viction exists in their minds between our appearance and our 
character, as between our white colour of skin and our superior 
education and powers of mind. And if this species of feeling 
were not sustained, to what ridiculous lengths we must go. Why, 
you do not suppose that the Governor-General should paint 
himself black sarely, bnt even to this extent might the principle 
contended for be argued to extend. Why, it is by the association 
of ideas that their opinions of our great mental superiority, of 
our high morality, of the commanding powers of our minds, and 
of all those qualities which from the time of Lord Clive have 
made the English dominant over the country, are maintained. 
How is it that Lord Ellenborough seeks to maintain this high 
character which we have so long enjoyed ? His plan of governing 
with success seems to have been that of turning himself as fast as 
lie can into the various characters of Hindoo, Rajah, Mussulman, 
and omnipotent governor, and that alone supplies ample reason 
for his recall. But to turn to the words of tin's foolish proclama- 
tion. I say that it is neither English nor oriental. It bears no 
resemblance whatever to anything I have ever read of, which 
professed to be of the same character, nor of the hundreds of 
thousands of models to be found in the archives of the East 
India Company. It is not original either, and I will tell the 
House whence Lord Ellenborouo'h borrowed it. It is an imitation 
of those trashy rants which proceeded from the proconsuls of 
France, in the time of the Directory during the French Revolution, 
and more especially of that address which was put forth at the 
time of the passage of the Po. It is exactly in the style of these 
productions, and my Lord Ellenborough could hardly be ignoran 
of them or their terms. There are, besides, some lines of Mi\ 
Canning upon them, which that noble Lord could hardly fail tc 



LORD ELLENBOKOl Gil's PROCLAMATIONS SOMKAUTH. 133 

know when he speaks of the invasion of Italy and the Justice 
of the agents of the Revolution. Mr. Canning says — 

" Not she in British Courts that takes her stand, 
The daAvdling balance dangling in her hand, 
Adjusting punishments to Fraud and Vice, 
With scrupulous quirks, and disquisition nice; 
But firm, erect, with keen reverted glance, 
The avenging Angel of regenerate France — 
Who visits ancient sins on modern times, 
And punishes the Pope for Caesar's crimes." 

In the papers of Revolutionary Fiance, the noble Lord found 
his models. But they had an excuse which was wanting to the 
proclamation of the noble Lord. The French Revolution had 
thrown down all good taste and judgment in writing, and all 
diplomatic and official places were filled by persons new to public 
affairs, who had scrambled into high situations — some of them 
possessing mere smatterings of college learning, others devoid of 
education, except such as they might have obtained bv chance, 
and from seeing Talma at the theatres. But was it for the noble 
Lord to adopt these documents as precedents, he a Conservative 
Governor-General of India ? If the noble Lord plead them, I 
think we may safely say that he has found it difficult to find anv 
other. I. do think, then, that in this proclamation we find matter 
for serious condemnation. If we go over all the statesmen who 
have ^ovc— ed India, we find none who have not committed very 
serious errors, and we find occasions on which the most important 
and most grievous mistakes were made. True it is that no 
statesman ever existed who did not commit some miscalculation. 
Lord Somers, Mr. Walpole, Mr. Pitt, and Lord Chatham had. 
Nobody would now deny that Mr. Pitt had miscalculated when he 
sent the expedition to Quiberon, but even then he had been guilty 
of no error like this ; and all that could be said was, that though 
\\ie miscalculations of those great men had been most serious and 



LORD ELLENBOKOUGH S PROCLAMATIONS S0MNALTT1. 

pernicious to the country, still they were not such as to unfit them 
tor the conduct of the greatest affairs. This proceeding of the 
Governor-General of India reminds me of the triumph of Caligula, 
who took his soldiers to the beach, and bid them fill their helmets 
with cockle shells, and then marched them and deposited the 
shells in the Capitol as trophies of his triumph over the ocear. 
That was a proof that Caligula was unfit to govern. So it i 
related of the Emperor Paul of Russia, who once ordered that 
men should not wear pantaloons ; that they should not wear their 
hair combed over their foreheads ; and that, finally, having 
ordered that no man should wear a round hat, an Englishman 
thought to outwit him by going into the streets in a hunting cap, 
when the emperor, unable to define the new covering for the 
head, issued an order that no man should appear in public with a 
round thing on his head, such as the English merchant wore. It 
might be well said that a man who put forth such a ukase as this 
was not a man capable of managing great affairs. With regard 
to this proclamation, I do not say that the noble Lord is not 
entitled to employ a new style. Did it never occur to him, how- 
ever, to consider that it was probable that if this sort of style had 
any peculiar advantage, Warren Hastings, Sir Charles Metcalfe, 
and other Governors-General, men who were as familiar with the 
languages and the manners and the habits of India, as many hon. 
Members of this House are with the language and habits of 
France, would, in all probability, have employed it ; %l it never 
occur to him I say — independently of his own high merit — that 
this original and striking mode of speaking to the people of 
India would have been just as likely, if not more so, to have been 
adopted by men of such attainments as I have described, if they 
thought it could be attended with any good results. But there is 
another reason why this proclamation is to be viewed with regret, 
because it affords a serious indication of the terms on which Lord 
f£l}enborough stands with the officers of the civil service of 4*e 



Lord ellenborough*s proclamations — soMNAUTfc. 135 

East India Company —and especially with that eminent individual 
with whom I have the pleasure to be acquainted, whose name i 
attached to this notification. I will pawn my lite, that Lord Ellen 
borough never asked that gentleman his opinion on the subject of 
this proclamation, or that, if he did, he gave an opinion adverse 
to it. No one in the Indian service will believe that the nobl* 
Lord ever applied to Mr. Maddocks. I am certain that no Gov^-- 
nor-General who stood on the terms with the civil servants of the 
East India Company, on which Lord William Bentinck or Lord 
Auckland stood, would have looked to them in vain for aid. I 
am confident that if either of those noble Lords, in an unlucky 
moment — their minds enveloped in some mist — had proposed to 
publish such a proclamation, the gentleman to whom I have 
referred would have advised them not to issue it. The only 
possible explanation which can be given of the issuing of this 
proclamation, therefore, is, that the terms on which Lord Ellen- 
borough stands with the Company's servants are such, that even 
the most eminent of those servants did not venture, even on the 
most important occasions, to offer him advice, however greatly he 
should be in want of it. I will now for one moment consider in 
what position it is that Lord Ellenborough is placed. Is the 
House aware, that even when the Governor-General is at Calcutta, 
surrounded by his council, his single voice can overbear that of 
the whole council in any case on which any execative measure is 
to be determined on ? All that the other members of the council 
car. do is to give him their opinions in writing, and to call upon 
him to write down his reasons for any adverse opinion at which 
he may arrive ; and then, if he chooses, his single voice, whether 
the question involve the important considerations of war, peace, 
or finance, overbears all. The right hon. Baronet opposite is a 
powerful Minister — a Minister more powerful than any we have 
had for many years — but I venture to say, that his power over 
the people of this country, great as it is, and extensively as it is 



136 L6ftft E1leNB6R0UGH*S PROCLAMATIONS SOMNAtJTH. 

exercised, is as nothing when compared with the extraordinary' 
influence which a Governor-General can put in force ovei 
90,000,000 or 100,000,000 of subjects of Britain. And this is 
his power when controlled by the presence of his council. But 
where is he now ? He has given his council the slip — he is 
alone — he has not a single person with him who is entitled to 
advise him. If he had, there m'ght be some hopes entertained 
that nothing like this would have happened. But, no ; he is by 
himself. He is invested with the whole of the council. Of this 
vou may be sure, that no Governor-General in this situation will 
ever have one word of advice, unless he so conduct himself as to 
show that he is willing to receive it; therefore, the danger and 
the risk of having a person in the position of Governor-General, 
who is disposed to plaos himself in a situation of solitude, at a 
distance up the country, are beyond all description. The interests 
constantly arising, and dependent on his sole command, are so 
vast, that words which would only soberly describe them, would 
sound like a gross exaggeration, and those powers aire all vested 
in one man who has only been a few months in India and I can 
hardly think that my Lord Ellenborough can be said to hare 
acted wisely, considering his short experience in India, in sepa- 
rating from all those who possessed knowledge and abilities, and 
had a rie'ht to advise him. We find other Governors General who 
have had long acquaintance with that part of the British domi- 
nion, carefully abstaining from adopting a course calculated to 
remove from them the means of obtaining advics. I cannot sit 
down without addressing myself to the Board of -Directors of the 
East India Company, and I must express my sincere hope that 
considering the heavy responsibility which rests en them, they 
will not hesitate to recall Lord Ellenborough from his govern- 
ment. I do hope that they will take the advice in this aspect of 
one who was an attached servant of the Company; who still 
possesses the greatest desire for their good, and would do every 



l6kb ELLENBOROUGIl's PROCLAMATIONS — SOMXAl'irt. 

thing in his power to see them placed in a safe and honourable 
position. But if they are placed in that position that they cannot 
or will not recall the noble Lnrd, then I trust that they will not 
hesitate to give him immediate instructions to return to his 
council. He has now no adviser who can raise his voice tr secure 
him from the creation of new evils. I am sure that the next des- 
patches to be received from India will be looked for by the Board 
of Directors as well as by the Government with the greatest 
anxietv. I sav, send back the noble Lord to Calcutta. There, at 
least, will be those who will be entitled to speak to him with 
authority, and who, if I know anything of the members of 
council, will do so. It is something even to be required to record 
your reasons for everything you do — it is something to interpose :\ 
delay, though only of twenty-four hours, which is required in this 
case, between the conception of a project and the carrying of it 
out. I know that these checks are not sufficient in some crises, 
but they are something, and I do most earnestly implore the 
Directors to consider gravely the position in which they will 
stand, if they give up this most faithful and sincere council, I 
cannot help thinking that where a body such as the council 
exists — a body formed for the express purpose of checking the 
Governor-General in proceedings inconsistent with the interests of 
the empire of Great Britain in India, the powers of such a body 
ougjht not to be put in abe'yance in the case of a man who, above 
all who have ever been sent to India in the capacity of Governor- 
General, most stands in need of such assistance and restraint a* 
the council are able and bound to afford. 



m 



THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON.* 

MARCH 21, 1843. 

I hope, Sir, I shall find credit with the House when I state, wit4 
all earnestness, that the few observations which in the dis 
charge of my duty to ray country I feel bound to offer on this 
occasion, are in no respect dictated by any feelings of either 
national or personal animosity. The feeling of national animosity 
is in all cases odious, but such animosity on the part of English- 
men towards the people of the United States, may justly be 
termed unnatural. Whatever intercourse I have had with the 
citizens of the United States has been uniformly an interchange 
of courtesies and kind offices ; and as a public man, and as an 
Englishman, I can think of that great community only as one 
composed of persons whose veins are full of our blood, whose 
minds are nourished by our literature, and whose most valuable 
institutions are derived from our own. As a public man, again, I 
cannot but reflect that while peace is in all quarters the greatest 
of blessings, while war in any part of the world must be regarded 
as one of the greatest of public calamities, a war with the United 
States would be of all the calamities that could befal this country 
the most disastrous, for it would unite with all the horrors of 
foreign war many of the peculiar enormities of civil conflict; it 
would interrupt that salutary connexion which exists between the 
two countries; it would produce frightful disturbance of trade; it 
would involve in extensive ruin private families; and it would 
obstruct f o h greater extent than any other event I can well con- 

* Hansard, 3«1 Serios, vol. Ixvii. p. 1252-1267 



THE TREATY OK WASHING TON. 130 

ceive. the screak interests of humanity and civilization. Having 
protested that towards the United States I entertain no feeling of 
ill-will, I can with equal truth make the same declaration with 
respect to the noble individual whose conduct is peculiarly under 
discussion; and 1 cannot easily conceive, from anything I have 
seen or heard, that Lord Ashburton can, in this House or else- 
where, have any personal enemy. I readily and cordially admit 
the extent of his information; and I sincerely admire those emi- 
nent abilities, which I have s?en displayed in this House with 
great profit and advantage to the public, and from which I have 
myself derived pleasure and instruction. I readily admit his 
integrity, ana his many amiable qualities; and if in anything I 
may say, [ should, with reference to that noble Lord, exceed the 
limits of the strictest decorum, or the rules of Parliamentary 
debate, I can only say with regard to anything I may so utter, 
that I beforehand wish it unsaid. Cut his Lordship knows, and 
those connected with him know., that it is the duty of public men 
to scrutinize most strictly the conduct of the responsible servants 
of the Crown ; an they know that on no occasion could it be 
more important to do i-c. than with reference to the subject now 
under discussion. Indet.d, after the declaration which has been 
made by the right hon. Jiaronet (Sir It. Peel), it is more important 
to scrutinize the conduct of the Government with respect to this 
question than at first sight appeared necessary. The right hon. 
Baronet takes upon himself, and upon the Government of which 
he is the head, the entire and complete responsibility of the matter 
and manner of this important negotiation. Now this negotiation 
is not only importaut in itself, on account of the interests at stake, 
but in another point of view it is of great importance. It is the 
first great negotiation which since the last change of Ministrv has 
been concluded between England and any foreign power. Coining 
into office after exclusion from power, with a short interval, for, I 
tJiink, upwards of ten years, the Members of the present Govern- 



]40 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 

rnent found that our relations with the United States presented 
one of the most important subjects to which their attention could 
be directed. They considered the subject, they state, with extreme 
attention ; they selected, with the greatest care, a negotiator for 
the purpose of carrying their views into effect; they approve, in 
every respect, of his conduct. The fruits of this negotiation lie 
before us ; and we must consider ourselves as inquiring, not 
merely whether this treaty is a just and proper one — not merely 
whether this correspondence be honourable to the abilities and 
public spirit of Lord Ashburton — but, seeing how probable it is 
that the present Government will for a considerable time retain 
their position in power — whether their policy be pacific in truth, 
or pacific only in show, and whether, on the system they seem at 
present inclined to pursue, it is probable that the honour and 
interests of this country are likely to be promoted — I shall com- 
mence by making a concession which I think the right hon. Baronet 
opposite will admit to be a iarge one, and for making which, I fear, 
the noble Lord near me (Lord Palinerston) may consider that 1 
merit some degree of blame. Though I am firmly convinced, 
that if this question were tried as a mere matter of right, we 
have, with regard to the boundary, clearly ceded too much; 
though I think we have ceded not only that which we had a 
light to keep, but that which it would in many respects have 
been advantageous to us to have retained ; though I think the 
negotiations, in many of the points mentioned by my noble 
Friend, have been on that subject most unskilfully conducted ; 
yet I feel, and I have always felt, most strongly the immense 
importance of arriving at a settlement of this question. I have 
always felt that when a subject has been agitated during so manv 
years — when it has excited so much exasperation — when, on both 
sides, there is so firm a conviction of the justice of their respective 
claims — something must be sacrificed. It is necessary, I admit, 
imder suck circumstances, that a compromise should be made, ] 






THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 141 

cannot better express my opinion on this subject than by adopting 
the language of the hon. Member for Halifax at the beginning of 
the present Session : — 

" I am ready to admit (my hon. Friend said), that if the causes of dif- 
ference between the two countries are fairly adjusted, if the arrangements 
are such as to close the present, and preclude future causes of dispute, I 
am not one of those who would attach much importance to a few square 
miles of territory more or less ; but then I must have a distinct assurance 
that those causes of difference have actually been removed." 

The conditions, however, which I think myself entitled to 
demand, when we have been ceding what the right hon. Baronet 
opposite admits, if I underctand him, to be our right, are these * 
three : — First, that the dignity and honour of this country shall 
be in no respect compromised by the manner in which the arrange- 
ment shall be made. To that condition, if I correctly understand 
the right hon. Baronet, he will, I doubt not, give his assent. The 
second condition I must require is, that the treaty purchased by 
this sacrifice of our rights shall be a treaty which either removes 
all cause of difference, or if it does not effect that, at least does 
net place us with regard to any of them in a decidedly worse 
position than that in which we stood before the treaty was con- 
eluded ; and lastly, I am entitled to demand tW ^ ucat y shail 
be one which has produced on both sides kindly and cordial 
feelings, and which has rendered the recurrence of any difficulties 
such as those which preceded it in the highest degree improbable. 
I regret to say that I entertain very grave doubts — I tray say 
more than doubts— whether the negotiations, and the treaty 
which has resulted from them, will be found to fulfil these con- 
ditions. First, then, as to the question of national honour. I 
may say that it is impossible to read through this correspon- 
dence, to compare the letters, without exception, of the English 
Plenipotentiary with those which emanated from the American 
secretary, without being struck with a certain humble, caressing, 



1:42 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON*. 

wheedling tone which pervades them, and which seems to me 
utterly inconsistent with, the dignity of the office which Lord 
Ashburton occupied. Many cases, which I could cite, occur to 
me ; some of them — indeed most of them — appear slight at the 
first glance ; but as Lord Bacon says, 

" A straw will serve to show you which way the wind blows." 

I think it was highly improper on the part of Lord Ashburton 
to state to the government of the United States, as a reason why 
he should be especially trusted by them, and why they should act 
with more confidence and cordiality towards him, that he had 
opposed the last war with America. I think that was not the 
course an English Ambassador ought to have pursued. I disap- 
prove of that war ; it occurred before my time ; but as far as I 
have obtained information on the subject, I think that those who 
joined Lord Ashburton in opposing that war acted a wise and 
patriotic part. But I conceive that when a person receives the 
Queen's command to go forth as her representative, he is in 
that capacity the organ of the Government, and he is not entitled 
to ask the favour and confidence of the power to which he is 
accredited on the ground that his opinion is opposed to the line 
Y* ~" --j"**** which has been pursued by his Government and by his 
Sovereign, that conduct navn^ o c ^ c * nc tioned and supported by 
the voice of the Houses of Lords and Commons. Can any hon. 
Gentleman furnish me with a diplomatic precedent for such con- 
duct ? I remember none, although I confess my own diplomatic 
studies have not been so extensive as I could wish. I do remem- 
ber, however, the negotiations of 1806, and if Mr. Fox had 
chosen to do so, he might then have made a merit with the 
French Government of his constant and determined opposition to 
the war with France. He might have said in his letter to Talley- 
rand, " I have been the firin opponent of war. When every one 
was clamouring for war against France, and when the Oppo- 



THE TREATY OF WASHINGT OS". 14S 

sition dwindled down to thirty or forty Members, I cried, ' Fo.^e, 
peace, peace !' " But Mr. Fox — the greatest diplomatist, Lord 
Grenville said, who ever lived — knew too well what pertained to 
his duty as a public man, and never by one word did he repudiate 
or disclaim any act of his predecessors, or make any distinction 
between himself and Mr. Pitt. In this correspondence, however, 
Lord Ashburton expresses his strong disapproval of the last war. 
I will take one document of some importance ; and I shall be 
surprised if I do not satisfy the House that a stain has been 
inflicted on the character of this country such as it will be very 
difficult to parallel in the whole history of diplomacy. With 
respect to the Madawaska settlement, Lcrd Ashburton says : — 

"The history and circumstances of this settlement are well known to 
you. It was originally formed from the French establishments in Acadie, 
and has been uninterrupbfdly under French or British dominion, and never 
under any other laws. The inhabitants have professed great apprehensions 
of being surrendered by Great Britain, and have lately sent an earnest 
petition to the Queen, deprecating' that being done. Further, this settle- 
ment forms one united community, all connected together, °.nd living some 
on one and some on the other side of the river, which forms a sort of high 
road between them. It seems self-evident that no more inconvenient line 
of boundary could well be drawn than one which divides in two an 
existing municipality — inconvenient as well to the inhabitants themselves 
as to the authorities under which they are to live. There would be evident 
Hardship, I might say cruelty, in separating this now happy and contented 
village." 

Now, I will put it to the House, can any obligation be stronger 
than that which lies on a Sovereign to keep under his Govern- 
ment — except where he is bound by justice, or compelled by 
overpowering force, to cede a territory — all those subjects who arc 
attached to his sway ? The cession of a territory, the inhabitants 
of which implore you to retain them under youi Government, is 
the very last calamity which conquest brings on a nation. The 
answer returned to this communication by the United States 



TTifi TREATY OF \VASHlriGTON. 

Govarnment is in a very different tone. Indeed, the whole tone 
of the correspondence on the part of the United States is firm, 
resolute, vigilant, and unyielding ; but I must do them the justice 
to say, that except in this single instance, there is no case in 
which offence can be justly taken. 

In this case I cannot acquit the Secretary of the United States 
rf having offered something in the nature of a serious affront — I 
hope it was not intentional — to the English Government. The 
Secretary of the United States informs Lord Ashburton, in his 
reply to the noble Lord's letter, that he 

" Forbears from going into the consideration of the mass of other argu- 
ments and proofs, for the same reasons which restrain your Lordship from 
entering into an extended discussion of the question, as well as because 
your Lordship will have an opportunity of perusing a paper, addressed to 
me by the commissioners of Maine, which strongly presents the subject, on 
other grounds, and in other lights." 

I think that, under the circumstances, I am entitled to say, that 
Mr. Webster adopts the opinions expressed by the Maine commis- 
sioners. He says distinctly that he will not enter into the argu- 
ments urged by Lord Ashburton, because he sends him a paper 
drawn up by the commissioners of Maine, which presents the 
question in a strong point of view. New, see in what manner the 
Maine commissioners address themselves to Lord Ashburton's 
argument about the feeling of the people of Madawaska. Ine) 
pronounce an invective on the tyranny which they allege England 
has exercised towards that very people. They say. 

"The hard lot and sufferings of these people and of their fathers, give 
them a claim to our sympathies. The atrocious cruelties practised upon 
their ancestors are matters of history. The appalling details of them are 
among their traditions. The fathers and mothers have taught thern to 
their children. When fleeing from their oppressors in 1185, they settled 
down in the wilderness of Madawaska, they believed and understood 
themselves to be within the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, fi 



ttttt TREATY OF \\ 'ARI1IN-(!T0X. 145 

people of whom Franco had been the friend and ;dly in the war which hud 
just terminated in their independence, and who was still the frieud and 
ally of France in peace. Their history since that period has lost little ol 
its interest. Too few in number, too weak in resources, too remote tc 
expect or receive aid, they submitted to whatever master assumed author- 
ity over them. With a knowledge of their history, and the wrongs they 
and their ancestors have suffered, it will be difficult for the people of 
Maine to bring themselves into the belief that these people are opposed to 
living under the mild and gentle sway of our free institutions. It will be 
equally difficult for the people of Maine to satisfy themselves that it ia 
only from a lively and disinterested sympathy for these poor Frenchmen 
that the Government of Great Britain is 60 solicitous to retain possession 
of the south bank of the St John, extending from the due north line more 
than fifty miles up to Fish River." 

This is the paper transmitted by Mr. Webster to Lord Ashbur- 
ton, in answer to his Lordship's earnest appeal in behalf of tha 
people of Madawaska ! It avers distinctly that the British Go- 
vernment had alienated the people of Madawaska by its cruel 
conduct towards them, and insinuates broadly that Lord Asbbur- 
ton's declared sympathy for them was nothing but hypocrisy. 
I venture to say, that if any such paper had been addressed by 
Lord Ashburton to Mr. Webster, a sharp reply would instantly 
have been returned to it. Any one who looks at the whole of 
this correspondence, cannot fail to observe a marked contrast 
between the tone of the representatives of the two Governments. 
What was Lord Ash burton's reply to the passage which L have 
read 1 Nothing but an expression of profound respect for the 
gentlemen of Maine. His Lord.ship says, in his next Letter to 
Mr. Webster : — 

" Tf the observations contained in my note of the 13th ultimo have 
given rise ro these consequences. 1 much regret it: and 1 would now pass 
over all these more than useless discussions, and proceed at once to notice 
the proposals you make, if I were not apprehensive that my so doins; 
might be construed into some want of respect for the parties irom whom 
these observations have proceeded." 
VOL. II. 



146 THE TREATY OF tVASHItfGfdtf. 

Then comes an observation respecting the people of Madawaska ' 

"It is sufficiently explained in my plan for a settlement, why I was 
anxious not to divide, in two parts, by our new line of boundary, the 
Madawaska settlements; and I am sorry to say, that the information I 
have since received, both as to local circumstances and the anxiety of th* 
people themselves, tends strongly to confirm my impressions." 

That is to say, as he had said at first, that it would be a cruel 
act — that it would be " an evident hardship," to separate these 
people ; that he should consider such a separation, by placing 
them under separate laws and Governments," a most harsh pro 1 
ceedirig" — that it would be making aliens of a people who wished 
to remain under the protection of the British Crown ; but still — 
the noble Lord in effect goes on to say — but still, as the commis- 
sioners of Maine say, that it is hypocrisy in the British Govern- 
ment to say that these people wish to remain under our protection, 
you may take them. That is what Lord Ashburton says. And 
then Lord Ashburton puts the matter on the ground of humanity, 
and says, — 

" I had hoped that the other equivalents which I had offered, combined 
with the sense entertained by the government of the United States of the 
pressing importance of the case, on the ground of humanity, would have 
been sufficient for the purpose T so anxiously desired ; but perceiving from 
your note, as well as from personal conversation, that concession on this 
point, is insisted upon, I might be disposed to consider, whether my anxious 
desire to arrive at a friendly settlement would not justify me in yielding, 
however reluctantly, if the latter part of your proposals did not, if 
finally persevered in, forbid all hope of any settlement whatever." 

This was the miserable result. After being insulted by the com 
missioners of Maine, and told that the English Government was 
guilty of nothing but hypocrisy in pretending to feel any anxiety 
for the people of Madawaska, Lord Ashburton quietly gives them 
up! Now, if it was necessary to give these people up, was it 
necessary for the English Government to degrade itself by going 



THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 147 

(o another government, and asking to be permitted to retail: 
sovereignty over them, on the ground of humanity ? Why should 
the Queen of England ask leave to retain control over her subjects 
on the ground of humanity ? I can conceive only two ground* 
on which her Majesty's Government could be justified in resorting 
to the plea of humanity. If the United States had a clear right 
to the territory, we might with propriety have begged them tc 
forego their claim on the score of humanity. Again, we migh 
have had recourse to the same plea if we had suffered some 
terrible reverse in war, as we know that after the battle of Jena 
the Queen of Prussia almost went down on her knees, in order to 
obtain the single town of Magdeburgh ; but, I ask, was there any- 
thing in the relations subsisting between England and the United 
States to make it imperative on us to say, " We have a right to 
these people; they are clinging to us for protection, we wish to 
retain them under our Sovereign's Government; pray, for the sake 
of humanity, let us do so." If the thing was to be done, if the 
Government had, after all, made up its mind to sacrifice them, 
why exhibit itself before all the world in the degrading position 
of a supplicant to the United States on the score of humanity 
Must part of these negotiations were carried on o-enerallv at con- 
feretu-es and discussions; very little of it was conducted by means 
of writing. One of the most important articles in the treaty is 
the Sth, which appears to have been negotiated without a single 
line of correspondence having passed between Lord Ashburton 
and Mr. Webster. Now, if it was necessary that this country 
should submit to the disgrace which I maintain is involved in the 
MtidauMska transaction, why was not that also decided by oral 
negotiation? WI13 was our humiliation paraded before all 
the world in this correspondence? Far be it from me to recom- 
mend anything like a contumelious policy towards other nations — 
far be it from me to advocate the adoption of a bullying policy; 
[>ut J do say that the self-respect which exacts from nations, witb 



148 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 

whom we are treating; — courteous conduct, is essential to the mile- 
pendenee and security of a nation. There is a distinction between 
bravado and the adoption of a high tone becoming the position 
and character of a great nation. I have said that the corres- 
pondence on the Table exhibits a marked difference in the ton« 
of the negotiation of Great Britain and the United States. Mr 
Webster writes on this subject — - 

" Your Lordship's observations, upon the propriety of preserving the 
unity of the Madawaska settlement, are in a great measure just, and alto- 
gether founded, I doubt not, in entirely good motives. They savour of 
humanity and a kind regard to the interests and feelings of individuals. 
But the difficulties seem insuperable." 

Well then, cau any human being say, that our honour was not 
concerned in preserving to the British Crown this territory of 
Madawaska, the settlers upon it being anxiously desirous to remain 
under our sway. Observe, too, the tone in which Mr. Webster 
receives even the mildest and gentlest remonstrance on the part of 
Lord Ashburton. Lord Ash burton had ventured to express a 
doubt in the correspondence relative to the Caroline, whether, in a 
particular instance, the American government would possess suf- 
ficient control over its subjects in their conduct towards other 
states — a very natural doubt, considering what has happened in 
late years. Mr. Webster, however, did not suffer the observation 
to pass for a moment without replying to it, and he declared — 

" Tt is for the Congress of the United States, Avhose attention has been 
called to the subject, to say what further provisions ought to be made tc 
expedite proceedings in such cases; and in answer to your Lordship's 
questions, towards the close of your note. I hav^ to say that the govern- 
ment of the United States holds itself, not only fully disposed, but fully 
competent to carry into practice every principle which it avows or 
acknowledges, and to fulfil every duty and obligation which it owes tc 
foreign governments, their citizens, or subjects." 

I ask any one to compare the letters of Lord 4shburton, an4 of 



TUB TKfcATV OF WASHINGTON. I4f' 

Mr. Webster from the beginning to the end of the correspondence, 
and to declare whether an entirely different spirit does not pervade 
every sentence of them. 1 think, therefore, that I have made out 
some ground at least on which to support the first point which I 
proposed to establish, and that there is grave reason to doubt 
whether the dignity of the country has not been grievously com- 
promised in this negotiation. The negotiation, I must observe, fai 
from settling all the points in dispute between the two countries, 
lias placed some of them in a worse position than that in which 
they previously stood. At this late hour I will confine myseli tc 
only one of these points. I undertake to prove that, with respect 
to that most important point of dispute between the two nations, 
the right of visit, the treaty of Washington has placed us on a 
worse footing than we stood on before. The right of visit has, it 
is well known, excited a strong feeling in the United States, and 
the right hon. Baronet opposite has declared that the British 
Government will not abandon it. Now T wish to understand 
from the Gentleman opposite, what construction they put upon the 
words of the eighth article of the treaty ? Tt runs thus : — 

"The parties mutually stipulate, that each shall prepare, equip, and 
maintain in service on the eoa.-l of Africa a sufficient and adequate 
squadron, or naval force of vesstl?, of suitable numbers and descriptions, 
to carry in all not h-s^ than eigh'.y guns, to enforce, separately and respec- 
tively, tiic laws, rights, and obligations of each of the two countries for the 
suppression of the slave-trade - the said squadron^ to be independent of 
each other, but the two governments stipulating nevertheless to give such 
orders to the officers commanding their respective forces, as shall enable 
them most effectually to act in concert and co-operation, upon mutual 
consultation, as exigencies may arise, for the attainment of the true object 
of this article; copies of all such articles to be communicated by eacn 
government to the other respectively." 

Does hat article mean that we have ceded the right of visit or 
oot ? The right hon. Baronet ha* told us distinctly that it does 



150 fttE TREATY OF WAStitNfcTOJ?. 

sot; but in what sense is that article received in the United 
States? The right hon. Baronet, if I understood him aright, took 
some exception to the reference which lias been made to the 
conduct of the American senate with reference to this question, 
and said that the president was the only executive organ. I con- 
tend that the senate is a portion of the executive power. Gen- 
tlemen must be aware that by the constitution of the United 
States, the consent of the senate is as necessary to make a treaty 
binding on America as the ratification of the Sovereign in this 
country. Now I hold in my hand the report of a speech delivered 
by Mr. Rives, the senator for Virginia, and chairman of the com- 
mittee of foreign relations to which the treaty of Washington was 
referred, and upon the report of which it was ratified. Mr. Rives, 
in referring to the eighth article, said, that under that, each power 
is to act separately and independently of the other, and neither 
power would be at liberty to visit the vessels of the other. I say 
that the eighth article is, in fact, so much waste paper; for it has 
been received in one sense in America and in another in London. 
Her Majesty has ratified the treaty in the sense that it does not 
abandon the right of visit, and the American president has ratified 
it in the sense that it does. Did any one ever hear of such a 
mode of settling long-disputed questions between two countries, 
and laving the foundation of lonjr-coTitkaed amity ? It would be 
bad enough if the matter were to stop here for the present, and 
we should hear nothing of the resuLs for four or five years ; but 
the very hand which has sown the seeds of dissension has also 
provided for their immediate fructification. It is provided that 
each country shall send a squadron, to enforce separately and 
respectively the laws, rights, and obligations of each, and it is 
intended these squadrons are to act with a view to obtain the 
same end. How ? Why, by one having instructions to enforce 
the right of search, and by the other having instructions to resist 
it. Was there ever such a device for bringing two nations into 



THE TREATY OK WASHINGTON. * 151 

collision ? Here are two squadrons, commanded by high-spirited 
officers, and manned by gallant crews — the one being instructed 
to do that which the other is told to consider an outrage on their 
flag. No device could have been more elaborately and ingeniously 
contrived to destroy the chance of maintaining pacific relations 
between the two countries. It is a curious circumstance that this 
article, so important in itself, and so strangely framed, is one 
respecting which not a single line of explanation is to be found in 
the correspondence — everything respecting it would seem to have 
passed in conversation. Which of the two suppositions am I to 
adopt? Am I to suppose that Lord Ashburton, not intending to 
abandon the light of visit, vet in conversation with Mr. Webster 
inadvertently let fall some expressions which induced that gentle- 
man to believe that he did abandon it. [Sir R. Ptel : No.] 
I accept the right lion. Baronet's denial ; but then, look at the 
other horn of the dilemma. How came it into the head of Mr. 
Webster, within a week of the signature of the treaty, to inform 
the committee of Foreign Affairs of the Senate that we had given 
up the tight of visit? — and how came it into the head of the 
American President to make the same declaration ? I am unwil- 
ling to attribute this apparent misapprehension to intention or 
misrepresentation on the part of the American authorities. Per- 
haps it is better to suppose that Lord Ashburton, in his conference 
with Mr. Webster, allowed his speech to get the better of him. 
I have sometimes observed that that able and ingenious man, 
when on the floor of this House, allowed his speech to get the 
mastery of him, and so has given utterance to words which he 
had not well weighed before, nor could accurately remember after. 
To suppose that the government of the United States should, 
before the ink r»£ the treaty was vet dry, have committed an act 
of state craft siiv,h as its conduct if insincere would be, is tc 
imagine a oroceedlnjo which could not be accurately described in 
very mild terms, However, the first proof we have, of the 



152 * THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON'. 

amicable effects of the treat}' of Washington i.s, that on the first 
day of the Session, the Prime Minister of England is obliged to 
rise in the House of Commons and contradict what the American 
president 3iad stated about tke eighth article. This is not a 
symptom betokening the existence of that state of amity which 
we have been brought to expect would be the result of the treaty. 
1 cannot help referring to another point, I allude to the bill intro- 
duced into the Senate respecting the Oregon territory. That such 
a bill should have been carried by a majority, is sufficiently 
indicative of the state of feeling in America towards this country. 
It should be borne in mind, that the senate is not dependent foi 
its existence on the popular will ; it is elected, not by a democratic 
body, and endures for six years. It is a body which comprises 
amongst its members a large proportion of the men of the 
greatest weight and most distinguished for their ability in the 
United States. When such a bill as that about the Oregon ter- 
ritory- can find supporters in such an assembly, it shows the state 
of public feeling which has sprung up in America from the Wash- 
ington Treat.v. One other matter conuected with this view of the 
question 1 may refer to. It was. it must be admitted, sufficiently 
ungracious conduct on the part of the American minister at Paris. 
General Cass, to interfere to prevent France from joining in the 
treaty of the five powers on the subject of the right of search. 
But was it necessary that, in the very first speech which the 
American President made after the signing of the treaty of 
AYashmcrtc-n. he should take credit for having, in that respect, 
frustrated the policy of England ? This is another proof of the 
amitv which lias sprung up from the Treaty of Washington. 
Look again at the language used in the Senate — not only the 
language of those who entertained strong feelings against England, 
but of M^ Calhoun, who was always supposed to be favourable to 
this eoiintry, What did he say, whim speaking on the right of 
Yim'i jie aaia, that |f Engird rmt af)) oilm interpretation n 



THE TKRATY OF \V ASH INOTON. f 53 

the treaty than that in which it was construed in America, she 
must "do it at her peril." Does this look like a pacific result? 
The right hon. Baronet tells us that he has not abandoned one 
particle of his position, and lie will not, of course, now disgrace 
the country by receding. The noble Lord had spent eight or 
nine months in arranging a treaty which is to secure peace and 
friendship, and what is the result ? Are not the symptoms of 
pugnacity still greater than they were before? And is not this 
the natural result of the course which has been pursued ? What 
other effect could be hoped for ? How can any nation respect a 
Government which has ceased to respect itself? I said before, and 
I now repeat, that, instead of procuring for us the blessings and 
advantages of peace, the course pursued has every tendency to 
plunge us speedily into a war with America; and it is because of 
the strong sense which I entertain of the advantages of peace, and 
because I feel that the policy indicated in the papers before tho 
House is not calculated to insure peace, that I now express those 
sentiments. It will not do for this co'mtry at one moment to 
take certain steps in the cause of humanitv, and shortly after to 
retrace them when resisted by other nations. The moment we 
abdicate any one object because of the resistance of another 
power, England loses the high place which she holds amongst the 
nations, and then every other power will be increasing in its 
demands for fresh exactions. What do we see daily in the French 
papers ? They have taken the tone from this circumstance, and 
are constantly referring to the example of America as one to be 
followed. They say, only let M. Guizot bully the English as the 
American President has done, and France would soon triumph 
over the arrogant pretensions of the haughty islanders. Every- 
thing in the country conspires to make it an object of general 
envy with other nations. Its great power, its immense wealth, its 
extensive empire, its flag floating in every sea, all contribute to 
tb&t effect. It. is easy to talk of the treaty of July, and \t\ 



154 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 

attribute the feeling of hostility to that, but it is well known 
everybody knows, that even the powers who are parties to that 
treaty, entertain a feeling of envy towards this country. Under 
these circumstances, I am satisfied that if you suffer yourselves to 
be treated with anything like contempt by other nations — if you 
allow any doubt to arise as to the spirit with which you are pre- 
pared to maintain the interests of this country in your dealings 
with the other powers of the world — if you allow it once to be 
thought that the higher the ground taken by others the lower 
will be your tone, and the more submissive you will become — if 
you allow these impressions to go abroad, founded upon your 
public intercourse with any one nation, then T am satisfied, I sa\ T , 
that you will soon have to contend with more than one enemy for 
your place among the nations of the world. I do not say that these 
are maxims which can be used by every Government. I do not say 
that there may not be some petty principality or some insignificant 
republic to which they would not apply, that there may not be 
some Duke of Lucca or some repuulic of Geneva that might not 
find it safe to adopt them ; but I say that that is not the state of 
our country; that she has been too great ever to find her safe!} 
in humble littleness. If she cannot find safety in her firmness and 
her dignity, Elngland can never find it in subserviency and shame 
These are my charges against this treaty. Allowing, in the first 
instance, that the boundary line is not the only direct source of 
censure, I say that the negotiation generally has been conducted 
in such a manner as to lower the character of this country. And 
secondly, I say that the negotiation has been so conducted, and 
the treaty has been so /Yarned, that it has left one of the most 
serious causes of irritation more inflamed than before. I say, that 
one article of the treaty has been ratified in one sense at Wash- 
ington and in another sense in London. I say, that you are both 
sending your squadrons to meet each other under circumstances in 
which they cm be scarcely friendly. 1 see no symptoms leading 



Ttttt TREATS' OF W\R1ltV(M'OK. 15E 

Jrte to believe that the effect of all your humiliation has been to 
obtain any kind feeling, any esteem, any respect frcm the United 
States. On the contrary, as far as I can judge the disposition on 
the part of public men in the United States, \ think the) 7 seem to 
b< iieve that that power has nothing to do but to take a very high 
ai d resolute tone in order to obtain whatever it may wish. I 
think, too, I can see in the feeling of the other powers of the 
world towards you the effect of what you have done with the 
United States. I think 1 can see on their part a belief that thev 
advantageously profit by adopting the example set them by the 
United States. And I conceive, therefore, that this policy of 
yours, though professedly pacific — and which, as far as your inten- 
tions and those of Lord Ashburton went, was so — is more likely 
than any other policy ever adopted by any Government of this 
country to bring on before long some most fearful and devastating 
wa?. 



m 



STATE OF IRELAND.* 

july 7. 1843. 

Mr. Speaker, the right hon. Gentleman [Mr. Shaw] who has jus-4 
sax down commenced his speech in language presenting, I think, 3 
somewhat singular contrast to its close. He began by saying, that 
he conceived it a sufficient, reason for voting against the motion 
that he should thereby imply a want of confidence in the Minis- 
ters ; and he closed his speech by declaring, in language not to bo 
misunderstood, his own want of confidence in them. And in truth 
i have seldom heard a Government less efficiently defended in 
debate (I speak of this evening), for every Gentleman who has 
addressed himself to the question before us, whether on the right 
or the left. Sir. seems to me to have directed his attack — though 
not always has it been upon the same ground — against the policy 
pursued by the present Administration. I say, every Gentleman 
who lias addressed himself to the question, for the speech of the 
hon. Member for Belfast was merelv a speech against the Repeal 
of the Union. The noble Lord, Sir, the Chief Secretary for Ire- 
land used an expression much resembling that with which the 
right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University com- 
menced his speech. He said, this motion must be considered as 
a motion of censure on the Government. I confess that on some 
grounds it must be so considered. 1 do not think it the only 
object — that of throwing censure on the present advisers of the 
Crown; but although it is not fie principal object of those who 

■ ll»n««ii-<l. 3d Seriea vol ixx. p. 790-809 



8't'ATfc OF IRELAND. 15? 

support the motion, I cannot consider it as a reason against oui 
supporting it, that it does by implication throw a censure on her 
Majesty's present advisers. For I am come, Sir, to this deliberate 
opinion, that to their conduct in opposition, and to their conduct 
since they came into office, we do really owe in a great measure 
the difficulties with which we have now to contend ; and it is also 
my opinion, that since those difficulties arose they have not shown 
any disposition to meet them with wisdom and with justice ; and, 
finally, that so far as I can judge from the declarations they have 
made respecting the policy that was expected from them, we have 
to anticipate calamities even worse than those which they have 
already encountered. I am justified, Sir, in saying, that the present 
state of things which so justly alarms all men of all parties is, to a 
great extent, to be attributed to the part they pursued before and 
since they gained the reins of power. Sir, it is impossible for us 
not to remember that two years ago the repeal agitation did not 
exist; that from 1835 to 1841 the agitation for repeal did not exist 
in anv formidable form; that during the whole administration of 
Lord Normanby and of Lord Fortescue, Ireland was in a situation 
in which I firmly believe the present Ministry would gladly see it 
again ; that whatever expressions may have been used by Mr. 
O'Conneli — a very able speaker certainly, but not the most con- 
sistent speaker — not a speaker from whom the expressions that 
drop one month can be deemed any indication of what he may 
utter the next — whatever, I say, the expressions made use of by 
Mr. O'Conneli in addressing large crowds, the fact undoubtedly is, 
that in the years during which Lords Normanby and Fortescue 
administered the Government of Ireland, that country presented a 
most marked contrast to its present position ; nay more, I have 
upon this subject the distinct admission of the right hon. Baronet 
at the head of the Government himself, that there is something in 
his position and in the character of the party of which he is the 
head which places his Government in Ireland under peculiar diffi 



158 STATE O* IRELAND. 

culties. We cannot have forgotten that in 1839 the right hon. 
Baronet declared that the difficulty which he felt principally stood 
in his way, when at that time called to power, was Ireland. It 
was not the colonies — it was not the foreign affairs — it was not the 
finances — no ! But, said the right hon. Baronet, " I will be frank. 
I will not attempt to disguise that the main difficulty of my position 
is Ireland." The right hon. Baronet judged rightly. Undoubtedly 
it was so, and it is so ; and why was it so ? and why is it so ? The 
right hon. Baronet felt it then ; he had still stronger reason to feel 
it now. What was it ? Was it not because in that party, of which 
the right hon. Baronet is the head, was to be found every person 
who had made himself justly obnoxious to the people of Ireland 2 
Was it not because in that party every man was to be found who 
had always been — as far back as memory could go — on the side 
of the few against the many ? Was it not that in that party 
every man was to be found whose peculiar delight had been in the 
contemplation of such parts of Irish history as showed the traces 
of severity — perhaps severity that could not be contemplated with- 
out pain, and that spoke of victories that should have been fol- 
lowed by no triumph ? Was there not to be found in that party 
every man whose favourite toast and tune was something odious to 
the great body of the Irish people ? Was there not to be found in 
tli at party every man who had been obstinately opposed to Catholic 
emancipation ? or who had been among the last lingering yielders 
of slow, reluctant, ungenerous concession? When at last public 
danger rendered it impossible to hold out any longer, was there 
not to be found in that party every man who did his utmost when 
emancipation had been yielded, to prevent its being carried into 
effect? every body who cried out against the first appointment of 
an Irish Catholic Privy Councillor — every body who exclaimed 
against the appointment of a Catholic Secretary to the Admiralty 
or a Lord of the Treasury ? Was there not to be found in that 
party every creature who let loose his virulent tongue to call the 



STAIE OF IRELAND. 159 

Irish Catholic preachers "priests of Baal?" — every scribbler who 
tinned them " surplieed ruffians?" Was there, in fact, a single one 
of those whose efforts had long been directed to rousing up against 
himself and his party the aversion of the Irish people, who was 
not. to be found among those who followed the right lion. Baronet 
and raised him to power? And the right hon. Baronet must have 
known the feelings of the people of Ireland. lie must have known 
that however cautious, careful, and correct his own language and 
proceedings may have been, he stood at the head of a party 
which had long wantonly outraged the feelings of the Irish people 
and must be obnoxious to them. Well, Sir, such was the position 
of the right hon. Baronet in 1839. Circumstances occurred which 
kept him from power for two years longer, yet many signs and 
symptoms seemed clearly to show that he, and the party of which 
he is the head — as his abilities unquestionably entitle him to be — 
would probably, at no distant day, Occupy their present position ; 
and I should have conceived that any wise men and any patriotic 
men — nor is the right hon. Baronet destitute of wisdom or 
patriotism — I should have thought that, under such circumstances, 
any wise men, and any prudent men, and any patriotic men, 
having a strong sense of the difficulties that lay in the way of their 
administration of affairs in Ireland, through the hostile feelings that 
had been roused against them by their friends, would have employed 
the remaind r of their time on this side of the House, and have 
done their best to conciliate the attachment of the Irish people. 
Instead of that, the noble Lord the Member for North Lancashire, 
w ho then acted with the right hon. Baronet, now a Member of the 
Cabinet, in the next year introduced his bill for disfranchising the 
Irish people under pretence of registering their votes. It is hardly 
necessary for me, Sir, to say anything of that bill, after what has 
been done with it by its authors themselves ; but at the same time 
it U impossible not to look upon the history of that year and the 
following one, as to the position of the party now in power 



160 STATE OF IRELAND. 

respecting Ireland, and above all comparing it with their profes- 
sions, their declarations, and their protestations. The noble Lord 
asked the Government if they mean to bring in a measure to 
correct the evils of the registration system in Ireland? He 
declared the evil pressing — the morality of Ireland endangered ! 
Are you not, the noble Lord impatiently said, prepared to avert the 
danger? to meet the evil? The answer of the Government was 
that they were not at present prepared to bring in any such 
measure ; then, I said, the noble Lord will bring in a bill. The bill 
was brought in, but it was no sooner examined, than it was con- 
demned by almost every Member for an Irish constituency. All, 
with one voice, declared it to be, though called a measure of regis- 
tration, a measure of disfranchisement. Unjust and odious as it 
was, however — offensive as it was to the pride and keen sense of 
wrong of the Irish people, the bill was pressed forward night after 
night. I never saw, or heard, debates carried on in so vehement 
and contentious a spirit. I have never known a minority (it 
became soon a majority) so well trained and disciplined. My hon. 
Friend, the Member for Halifax, tried to throw an impediment in 
their way. lie said, " Do not legislate for the Irish voters till you 
have legislated for the English." He made a motion to that effect. 
u No," said the noble Lord (Lord Stanley), "the cases are not 
parallel ; there are no evils of this kind in England, they are not 
to be met with except in Ireland — there they are so rank that they 
must be put down — delay would be too dangerous ; you cannot — ■ 
must not, wait for English legislation. Public morality is endan 
gered — perjury is the prevailing practice. This is not a mere ques 
tion of details, of registration, or revising barristers ; a great Stat 
crisis is here — a great principle is at stake ;" and the noble Lord 
forced on his measure. He overruled the motion of my hon. 
Friend the Member for Halifax. He was determined to carry it 
before the English measure on the subject was brought in. The 
&11, however, djd not pass in that Session, and in the ensuing 



STA'IK OF IRELAND. 161 

Session the noble Lord came down again with his favourite mea- 
sure. The Government interposed, and said they thought it pre- 
mature to legislate with respect to the registration of electors till 
they had defined the franchise. Again the noble Lord said, u No ! 
it was not necessary to define the franchise :" and again the noble 
Lord pressed on his disfranchisement bill, as it was justly called. 
Well, the plan prospered ; the delusion — not the first of unfounded 
delusions — prevailed; the noble Lord succeeded — he and his party 
are in power; two years have elapsed, and this great moral evil is 
yet unabated ! We now hear nothing of " perjury ;" nothing about 
those enormous frauds of the people of Ireland, which had long 
been polluting the Legislature ! We ask, " Where is the bill ?" 
We are told, "The Government desire first to settle the English 
franchise." We agree in the propriety of that; but why was it 
not assented to by the party opposite when we proposed it ? Then, 
again, we are now told, forsooth, that " when the measure is 
looked into, it is found to be a measure of disfranchisement." 
True. But were you not told so before ? Was it not proved to 
you over and over again, and that in the clearest manner? We 
are now told that we are to have a Registration Bill, with a fran- 
chise defined, based upon the poor-rate. [Lord Stanley: the fran- 
chise was not defined.] It was, at least, an alteration of the 
Reform Act. The right hon. Baronet (Sir J. Graham) said, he 
was pledged to William 4th, or somebody else, not to alter the 
Reform Act; yet he voted in favour of a bill ostensibly to regulate 
the registration of voters in Ireland, but which absolutely altered 
the Reform Act in its spirit and efficacy, and placed the franchise 
on an entirely new basis. The right hon. Baronet and his friends 
now speak of the responsibility of office ; but has an opposition no 
responsibilities? Have men who have ruined the country whilst 
sitting on this side of the House, no responsibility when they go 
over to the other. An opposition, Sir, has responsibilities; and I 
should blu^h if I did not show, in ray own couduct, that I am not 



162 STATE OF IRELAND. 

unmindful of them. But the noble Lord, as soon as lie finds the 
responsibility of Government lie at his own door, will not venturi 
to do an act which, from its great unpopularity, when he was ir 
opposition, he attempted with no other object than to obstruct th« 
Government of the day. By all these and similar means, you 
(addressing the Ministers) were raised to power, and do you sup- 
pose there is to be no reckoning for such conduct ? Happily, yes 
As political as well as private probity is the best policy, your time 
of retribution was to come, and by the course you then took, ? 
deep distrust was generated in the minds of the Irish people. 1 
was surprised that it did not come sooner, for undoubtedly, from 
whatever cause it arose, there was a lull, and a doubt how you 
would act. A notion got abroad that something great was to be 
expected from the Administration, but the very mode in which the 
right lion. Baronet fomed his Irish Ministry, showed on what prin- 
ciples the Government of that country was to be conducted, and 
upon those principles it has been conducted ever since. After the 
lectures he formerly read to us on the inconvenience of open ques- 
tions and discordances in the Cabinet, I own I was surprised at the 
formation of his Irish Administration. He told us over and over 
again formerly of the evils resulting from joining in the same 
Government individuals whose opinions were decidedly hostile; but 
what did he do when he came to form his Irish Ministry ? With 
regard to a Secretary, I am bound to say that he made the very 
best choice in his power ; but one thing made me wonder, and that 
was the manner in which the right lion. Baronet dwelt upon the 
excellence of that appointment, for he made it appear the peculiar 
and eminent fitness of the noble Lord (Lord Eliot) arose out of the 
votes he had given against the right hon. Baronet. This was rather 
a curious ground for a Prime Minister to take when pronouncing a 
panegyric; but then, in direct defiance of his own doctriries, the 
right hon. Baronet pairs with the noble Lord a Gentleman of whom 
I desire to gpeak with all respect, and who privately deserves to be 



StAffi OF tftKLAKO. 1(13 

so spoken of, who certainly was taken from the other extremity of 
die party. It was impossible, perhaps, to find two men whose 
views with regard to Ireland were so diametrically opposite as 
those of the noble Lord and Mr. Sergeant Jackson. The very first 
debate upon education exhibited the very best Parliamentary set-to 
between the Secretary for Ireland and the Solicitor-general for 
Ireland, that was perhaps ever witnessed. We had the whole of 
that side of the House vehemently cheering the Solicitor-general, 
while the unfortunate Secretary was obliged to content himself with 
the approbation of this. In fact, no more direct and obvious oppo- 
sition cordd have been established than that which existed betvveer 
the two managers of different departments of the Irish Government 
And this has been from first to last the whole system ; but I wil 
do what uistiee I can to the right hon. Baronet and his Colleagues 
and I will say for them that I believe thuy have governed Ireland 
as well as they could for very shame. They had no choice but 
either to act with the most glaring inconsistency, or to govern 
Ireland ill ; they have boldly faced the charge of inconsistency ; 
the recantation on the subject of the Registration Bill, must have 
been bitter indeed to the noble Secretary for the Colonies ; but the 
system was to be carried through, and the recantation must be 
made. The same system has pervaded your whole policy. You 
take up a certain plan of national Irish education ; your Solicitor- 
general attacks it with the greatest virulence — you make him a 
judge ; you place on the Episcopal bench a Prelate known to be 
opposed to it. You talk of impartiality in the distribution of 
appointments, and yet you place in the very highest offices persons, 
however respectable, who must be regarded by the people of Ireland 
with the utmost enmity and distrust. What is the natural effect? 
Your friends are cooled — your enemies are not conciliated ; you 
may learn this fact from the whole Orange press, if you will not 
take the word of your supporters ; and in a very short time the 
spirit of hostility lias grown up to a height newer before equaled 



t(M SfATE O^ infct.Atft). 

in Ireland. At this moment the language of every man of every 
party is, that we have arrived at a most formidable and alarming 
crisis ; on one hand you are reproached for not conceding with 
alacrity, and on the other for not coercing with vigour. Out of 
your own circle, not a man in the country, in Parliament or out of 
Parliament, speaks of your Irish Administration with the slightest 
confidence. Nobody supposes that this repeal agitation can go on 
from year to year without some decided measure ; and what has 
been the distinct intimation from the highest authority — from the 
Home Secretary, who is in fact the Chief Minister for Ireland, when 
the Secretary for Ireland is not in the Cabinet ? He has declared 
that concession has been carried to the utmost. True it is, that an 
hon. Member this night has endeavoured, in some manner, to 
explain away those words ; but even he could not have explained 
or defended what followed — I do not mean to lay any stress upon 
expressions which the right-hon. Gentleman (Sir J. Graham) him- 
self explained : I merely speak of that which he avowed in the 
clearest manner — which he did not attempt to retract ; he told us 
almost in as many words, that he repented all he had done towards 
Catholic emancipation ; he had supported it, lie said, in consequence 
of hopes which had not been realized, while the prophecies of the 
right hon. Member for Tarn worth in 181*7 had been too completely 
verified. He recanted all his opinions on this subject in words as 
clear as any he could employ; the best part of his political life 
has been wasted upon an object he regrets to have attained, and all 
lie has now to do is for the rest of his time to live and repent. We 
must, therefore, understand from the Government, that conciliatory 
policy is at an end; concession has been carried to the utmost, and 
the right hon. Gentleman is sincerely sorry that even Catholic eman- 
cipation was granted. I do not mean to state that he said anything 
to show that he would support the repeal of the Emancipation Act. 
but if words have a meaning, his words clearly showed that he 
lepeuted it had ever been passed. In my opinion, some of the dis- 



STATE OF IRELAND. 165 

content in Ireland arises from causes which legislation cannot 
correct; but it seems tome that the present extreme violence of 
that feeling has been produced by the misconduct of the party in 
power, both at the time they came into office and afterwards 
Their difficulties being so great, Ministers appear to have made up 
their minds to this, and this only, that all their actions shall be on 
the side of coercion and severity, and that they will do nothing in 
the way of kindness and conciliation. On the subject of the Arms 
Bill I have no extravagant feeling. Although I have voted for an 
Arms Bill in Ireland, yet, as a general rule, I believe it to be ? 
most inefficient measure. I say this, not from an observation of 
Ireland alone, but from conversing with men of great experience in 
other parts of the world. Men of great military and political 
abilities in India have universally told me that disarming orders 
invariably produced this effect, that they took away arms from the 
well-aftected, and left arms in the hands of the dangerous. At all 
events, you cannot deny that you have introduced into your Arms 
Bill irritating clauses which can have no value in enforcing its pro- 
visions. Then, look at your executive measure — your dismissal of 
magistrates. You could not dismiss them for reasons which I, Hi 
one, should not have censured, but you must dismiss them on the 
most unconstitutional grounds you could discover. You could not 
dismiss them without even violating the privileges of this House. 
You have a Chancellor talking about speeches in this House, with 
no official declarations, and, in fact, amounting to this — that when- 
ever a Minister of the Crown declares against a measure every man 
must be turned out of the commission who opposes it. I know, 
that the Lord Chancellor of Ireland cannot seriously maintain such 
a proposition ; but what can we think of a Government, which 
ought to be the most cautious of any, adopting the acts of that 
learned Lord — acts of the most grave nature — for the turning of a 
magistrate out of the commission of the peace, is one of the 
Wrongest measures, and one in which the strictest adherence |q 



If>6 STATE OF IRELAND. 

form is absolutely necessary ? A wise Government would no 
have coupled itself to any measure, adopted by any of its officers, 
however high in station, if the recognition of his acts involved a 
breach of the privileges of the House. No wise Government, Sir, 
would have adopted such acts, which must have been done in haste, 
because it is only telling every magistrate in England that he must 
not give expression to any opinion hostile to any act of Parliament 
which the Government of the day stated in their place in Parlia- 
ment must be maintained inviolate. Sir, it may be thought that I 
dwell too much upon these two solitary acts, but I must be per- 
mitted to remind the House, these are the only two acts which you 
have opposed to the agitation, which Mr. O'Connell did not over- 
state when he said all Europe, as well as America, was looking to 
it with deep interest. It is on that point, among others, that I 
differ from Government. I do not think that concession has been 
exhausted — I do not think that we have arrived at the end of our 
resources proceeding on a conciliatory policy. As to the Repeal of 
the Union no man has expressed, or can express, feelings so strong 
that I would not concur in them. I am persuaded that it is utterly 
impossible to have two equal and independent Legislatures under 
the same Sovereign. If there are any appearances in history to 
the contrary, they are delusive. Down to 1782, the English Par- 
liament legislated for Ireland, and subsequently to that period, 
Ireland was governed, first, by corruption, and afterwards by the 
sword. I do not believe that the hon. Mover was borne out when 
he reprehended the right hon. Baronet for saying that he would 
prefer war to a dissolution of the Union. The question is not 
between dissolution on the one hand and war on the other, for in 
my opinion war must inevitably follow dissolution. I have already 
said that legislation can afford no relief to some of the evils of 
Ireland. One of these is absenteeism, and as to fixity of tenure, 1 
would rather be a learner than a teacher. Some of the projected 
measures of recess would be useless, and others would be mere 



BfA'ffc OF IRELAND. ]fi? 

confiscation, and to confiscation I would never give mv consent. 
Nevertheless, I am not prepared to say, certainly not after the 
debate of to-night, that much may not be done in the way of 
legislation to improve the relations between landlord and tenant; 
out there are legislative and administrative reforms perfectlv in your 
power. It is possible for you to correct the manner in which public 
patronage is bestowed. I do not say that I would give Parliameu 
tary offices to Members who were opposed to the Government, bui 
you stand in Ireland in this position, that you would find it difficult 
to promote persons who have been your hearty and zealous friends, 
and who would not be regarded with dislike and distrust by the 
Irish people. For what you have hitherto done amiss you must 
now suffer penance, and the penance is the bestowal of your 
patronage upon men who have not been your general supporters. 
In my opinion that is a very light penance too, when we look at 
such cases as those of Mr. Lefroy and Mr. Sergeant Jackson, who 
were rewarded for what they did in your service. The refusal to 
bestow patronage without regard to mere political claims may be a 
good reason why you should retire from office, but it can be no 
reason why Ireland should be inis-governed. You say that you 
mean to settle the elective franchise on a new basis, and next year 
you must come down with a new bill to inform us who are and who 
are not to be electors; in that measure you may adopt a concilia- 
tory course without the slightest hazard to the public peace. Let 
us consider our situation ; we are beyond all teaching, if the expe- 
rience of the last few weeks has not taught us that a formidable 
Irish leader is much more formidable out of the House than in it. 
The measure of registration is studiously kept back from an uneasy 
feeling: if it turn out to be like your former measure of this kind, 
it cannot but excite the strongest opposition, and the most angry 
feelings ; but we cannot expect from you a truly fair and liberal 
measure, since it would expose a vast system of delusion. Yet 
why should you hesitate? You have already commenced your 



)G§ ^AtE OF iiiSlAKn. 

course of humiliation ; you have already drunk of the cup, and till 
best thing you can now do is to drain it to the dregs ; if it be 
bitter, remember you mixed it for yourselves. One subject I must 
speak of — the situation of the two churches with relation to each 
other. Without any advice from the right hon. Member (Mr. 
Shaw) I should carefully have abstained from aspersions upon the 
characters of individuals, and from expressions as to the institutions 
which might be considered abusive or scurrilous ; but let any Gen- 
tleman take any of the celebrated defences of the establishment, 
whether by its greatest, ablest, and uncompromising advocates., 
Warburton or Palev, or bv names of smaller note, and if he can 
make out anything like a case in favour of the present Protestant 
establishment in Ireland, I will at once give up the question. Is 
it not the plain and great object of a church to instruct the main 
body of the people ? Is it not its first duty peculiarly and empha- 
tically to instruct the poor? If any person attacked the church 
establishments of England or of Scotland, would not its vindication 
at once be rested upon the point, which, above all others, contrasts 
it with the church establishment of Ireland ? Is not the whole 
evil of the voluntary system to be found in the present state of 
religion in Ireland ? Does not Hume tell us, in a passage quoted 
on a former evening by the hon. Member for Bath, that it is of the 
highest importance to the State to connect the State with the 
priesthood, who teach the great mass of the people, which priest 
hood might otherwise exercise an influence dangerous to the civi 
power ? Can any body deny that the evil of a want of connection 
exists in the highest dfegnee in Ireland ? If then, your Protestant 
church in Ireland possesses also all the evils of the voluntary sys- 
tem, is it not something strange and startling to be told that it is 
an institution sacred and inviolable ? The arguments seem to 
resolve themselves into this: — That six or seven millions of Roman 
Catholics are compelled, in the year 1843, to acquiesce in the 
degradation of their own religion, and submit to the Protestant 



8?a?e ofr rtbtftMl ICO 

domination of one million. Let me, however, be distinctly under- 
stood. I do not say that it would be necessary, or even that it 
would be desirable, to subvert and utterly to destroy the Protestant 
establishment in Ireland. I would preserve vested rights inviolably 
but it is necessary that the church should be reduced to a strict 
proportion to the wants of the Protestants. Everything it is now 
in the power of the Government to do should be done for the pur- 
pose of putting the two religions on a perfect equality in point of 
consideration and dignity. I believe that this would be found a 
most beneficial and useful reform, and we have in favour of it an 
instance the best that all history can supply. The right hon. Mem- 
ber for Dublin University told us that if the Church and State 
were dissevered in Ireland, there would be an end of the Union in 
two years ; but it is natural and proper that we should look at the 
other instance of a legislative Union, which presents itself at once 
to our eyes, and which is strictly analogous. When Scotland was 
united there were circumstances which indicated that it would not 
be more permanent than the Irish Union ; it was effected after long, 
and violent, and bloody hostilities ; there was also a case of disputed 
succession, and the lano-uao-e in the Highlands was as different 
from our own as that prevalent in many parts of Ireland. Forty- 
three years have elapsed since the Union with Ireland, and why, 
after forty-three years had elapsed since the Union with Scotland, 
was there not as much danger of its termination ? Why was 
there no agitation — no disturbances ? There were plenty of causes 
of dissatisfaction and circumstances that seemed to favour a project 
for severance. There was Lord Bute's administration, Wilkes's 
election, violent political contests, much satire, bold invective, but 
no movement, no mobs in favour of disunion, nor the speech of a 
solitary agitator in favour of Repeal. One of these Unions has 
turned out the most happy and the most firmly established that 
was ever known among men, while in forty-three years after the 
Union with Ireland we find millions of men throwing out the loudest 
VOL. II. 8 



and most violent aspersions upon that measure. Is it not, then 
natural to look a little at the principles on which the two Unions 
were established ? As far as regards representation, Ireland has 
the advantage, for Scotland was allowed a much smaller number 
of Members ; but when the Union with Scotland was effected, the 
great Whig statesmen, Somers, Halifax and others, succeeded in 
inserting a clause containing a full recognition of the religion to 
which the people of Scotland were fondly and firmly attached. If 
the Union with Ireland had contained a similar wise and just pro- 
vision, it is my belief that we should not have heard a murmur 
against it, and that it would have been as inviolably maintained as 
the Union with Scotland. I am persuaded that it is still in your 
power to repair to a great extent this great omission in the Irish 
Act of Union. Like the hon. Member for Mallow, who so ably 
addressed the House tliis evening, I did not wish for the predomi- 
nance of the Roman Catholic religion ; but I do wish to see the 
Protestant and Roman Catholic religions equal in dignity and in 
honour, and that to neither should any ascendancy be given. 1 
believe that if this course had been taken at an earlier period, a 
great calamity might have been averted, and, I believe, that by 
taking it still the evils by which we are surrounded may be avoided. 
I wish I could entertain any hope that the present Government is 
about to adopt such a salutary policy ; but at all events it will be 
some satisfaction to me to mark by my vote, that although the 
discontent in Ireland is partly attributable to the delusions of 
demagogues, and partly to causes which legislation cannot correct, 
yet that it has been inflamed to its present height by a system of 
unjust and injudicious Government, and that by adopting a sound 
and wise policy it may yet be allayed. 



Ill 



APPREHENSION OF OFFENDERS' BILL— AMERICA.* 

AUGUST 11, 1843. 

He had hoped that his lion, and learned Friend [the Attorney 
General] would have given such an explanation as would have ren- 
dered it unnecessary for him to address the House on the question ; 
but with great concern, he must declare, that, after listening to the 
observations of his hon. and learned Friend, he felt more uneasiness 
respecting the bill than he did when the discussion commenced. 
He could assure the right hon. Baronet opposite that he had not 
the smallest intention of making any charge against the Govern- 
ment on this occasion. He was aware that a similar treatv was in 
contemplation when the late Ministrv was in office, and he trave 
the present Ministers full credit for having intended nothing, but to 
connect more closely the relations of amity between the two coun- 
tries, and the promotion of justice. He, however, looked with 
some anxiety to some portions of the bill, and he seriouslv enter- 
tained an opinion, which would probably startle his own Frieiids 
as much as the hon. Gentlemen opposite, namely, that the best 
course the Government could take would be to drop the bill, and 
cancel that part of the treaty to which it referred. He could no 
concur in the fundamental principles which his hon. and learne< 
Friend had laid down on the subject of extradition — a word, bv 
the-bye, which seemed to be introduced into the English language, 
and which, therefore, he might be excused for employing. No 
doubt it was a great evil that murderers and robbers should escape 

• Hansard, 3d Series, vol. lxxi. p. 568-57 %, 



172 APPREHENSION OF OFFENDERS BILL — AMERICA. 

punishment — it was an evil to the country from which they fled 
as well as to that in which they sought refuge ; but, nevertheless, 
he must be allowed to observe, that in another part of the world 
in which he had had an opportunity of hearing the matter dis- 
cussed, it was considered essential to a good scheme of extradition 
that there should be between the two contracting states a general 
assimilation of laws, manners, morals, and feelings, as would make 
it impossible that any conduct should be pursued by one state 
which would be grossly shocking and startling to the other. This 
had been the course pursued in India under successive govern- 
ments. Our Government in India never delivered a fugitive cri- 
minal to a power which was likely to try him upon principles 
which, according to our views, were grossly unjust, nor to a power 
which was likely to inflict a punishment shocking and horrible to 
civilised men. Those were the principles on which they acted in 
India. Suppose there was a country so barbarous and absurd as 
to punish offenders by the ordeal of red-hot ploughshares, would 
it be proper to establish extradition with it ? Should we give up 
offenders to be subjected to that punishment? And, taking his 
hon. and learned Friend's illustration, if any nation were to be so 
utterly absurd as to enact that a bachelor should be broken on the 
wheel for an offence for which a married man would be merely 
fined, would his hon. and learned Friend contend that we should 
have a treaty of extradition with that nation ? As regarded the 
treaty with France, he saw no objection to ;t ; and if such a treaty 
as the one under consideration had been entered into with the 
Northern States of America, in which the reports of our law courts 
were quoted, and the very details of our legal proceedings were 
adopted, it would have been productive of advantage. But in the 
Southern States the unfortunate relations between master and 
slave came into operation. He meant to give no opinion on the 
subject of slavery in the United States. He thought that it was in 
the highest degree improper for Merrjhers of that House to pass 



APPHEHENSION OF OFFENDERS* BILL — AMERICA. 173 

censures on the institutions of foreign countries, and if be wanted 
a warning to deter him from that course, he should find it in the 
exhibitions which iVmeriean orators had made when descanting- on 
internal questions appertaining to these islands, lie alluded to 
the question of slavery merely for the purpose of observing that 
there was a fundamental difference in that respect between the 
law of England and America, and that difference in the law occa- 
sioned a difference in manners, usages, and habits, which would 
create Jiificulties almost insuperable, to the execution of a treaty 
of extiaditiou between the two countries. Now, a word with 
respect to the law. He did not wish to misrepresent his hon. and 
learned Friend, and begged it to be understood that he was seek- 
ing for information on the question he was about to put. He 
earnestly wished to know in what sense his hon. and learned Friend 
understood the words murder and piracy? His hon. and learned 
friend would say that those words must be interpreted according to 
the law of the country in which the offences are committed. Now, 
there are many acts which would be classed as murder or justifi- 
able homicide, accordingly as the relations of slavery might be 
recognized or not in the place in which they were committed. He 
wouid give one instance of this. A woman in England, attacked 
by a ravisher, had a right to defend herself, and if she should kill 
her assailant, the act would be declared justifiable homicide; but 
if a woman in Georgia should slay her ravisher, or if a Quadroon 
girl should act so, she would be held guilty of murder. Take the 
case of a slave who had committed murder in his own defence. 
Suppose a man scourged him, pursued him, the slave had surely a 
right to resist, and in his defence, to kill his assailant; by the law 
of England that would be justifiable homicide, by the law of Geor- 
gia it would be wilful murder. In the case of the Creole, his hon. 
and learned Friend said he had recommended the Crown not to 
gm up the slaves ; and, no doubt, he was quite right in doing so; 
but vhat would his hon. aud learned friend have done under this 



174 APPREHENSION OF OFFENDERS' BILL AMERICA. 

act ? He (Mr. Maeaulav) should like to hear a definition of piracy. 
Suppo.se any person were to lay hold of us, clap us under hatches, 
and take ns to sea with a view of selling us, there could not he a 
diAibt that, by the law of England, individuals so held in confine- 
ment would have a perfect right to seize upon the ship, and to take 
it into the first port where they thought themselves likely to be 
secure. But if the persons held in confinement on board of such a 
ship were convicts, in the legitimate charge of officers appointed to 
take care of them, the same act would be piraeji; There could not, 
surely, be any objection to the insertion in the bill of some clause to 
this effect: Provided always, that in any case of a charge against 
a slave, he should not be delivered up if the offence with which he 
was charged would be one justifiable if committed by a freeman. 
He did not mean to propose these as the precise terms of the 
clause. That his hon. and learned Friend would be much better 
able than he to draw up. The next point on which he felt anxiety 
was the mode of trial to which a fugitive slave would be subjected 
He could not agree w'th his hon. and learned Friend that England 
had nothing to do with the mode of trial that might be adopted ; 
nor could he believe that the nature of the punishment to be 
awarded was unimportant. Another question presented itself to 
him. Suppose the man was acquitted in America, what was to be 
done with him then ? Was he to remain a slave in the hands of a 
master incensed by the attempt to run away ? Would the slave's 
life in such a case be safe, even after his acquittal? No: for in 
some states of the American union the law held it no crime to 
cause the death of a slave by what was called legitimate correc- 
tion. And, be it remembered, that he was talking now, not of a 
cruilty but an innocent man, and he must say that he could not 
contemplate such things without the greatest dread as to the 
effects they were likely to have on our national character. We 
had nothing to do, certainly, with the laws of America, bvi we 
muet no*- on that account make ourselves the slave-catchers of thfl 



-.1 



APPREHENSION' OE OFFENDERS DILL— AMERICA. 175 

Americans. Suppose, even, lier Majesty's Government put a 
liberal construction on this bill, the question was, what construc- 
tion the Government of the United States would put upon it? 
He believed that the view taken of the treaty in the United 
States was, that if a case similar to that of the Creole were to occur 
again, that the " pirates and murderers," as they were called, in 
America, would be delivered up under this act. But was this 
country prepared to submit to such a thing? If her Majesty's 
Government had made up their minds that they would not be the 
slave-catchers for the United States; and if the United States 
Government persist in taking a different view of the obligations 
of the treaty from that taken by her Majesty's Government, would 
it not be better to cancel this treaty at once ? By doing so, they 
would be guilty of no breach of engagement, for the power of 
doing so was expressly reserved in the treaty itself. If, however, 
her Majesty's Government waited till another case like that of the 
Creole occurred, and then while they put one interpretation upon 
the treaty, and the Government of the United States put a differ- 
ent interpretation- upon it, it was very possible that the most serious 
consequences might arise. 

The Attorney-General said, that in all the cases put by the right 
hon. Gentleman no doubt .could arise. The bill expressly said, that 
the fugitives must be tried by the laws of the country where they 
were found. 

Mr. Macaulay asked, whether lie were to understand, then, that 
an action not criminal in a free man, could not be held to be cri- 
minal in a slave ? 

The Attorney-General said lie was of opinion that an English 
magistrate would not be at liberty to enter into the question as to 
whether the fugitive brought before him was a slave or not. lie 
could only enter into such questions of common law as might 
arise out of the case, and if the accused person was not shown tc 
be a criminal, no extradition could take place. 



STATE OF IRELAND.* 

FEBRUARY 19, 1844. 

t cannot refrain, Mr. Speaker, from congratulating you and the 
House that I did not catch your eye when I before presented my- 
self to your attention. I should have been exceedingly sorry U 
have prevented any Irish representative from addressing the House 
on a question so interesting to his country ; but peculiarly sorry to 
have stood in the way of that Gentleman (Mr. J. O'Brien), who 
pleaded the cause of his country with so much force and eloquence. 
I now wish to submit to the House those reasons which appear to 
me to vindicate the vote I am about to give ; and in doing this I 
am sorry to say, that I shall not feel myself justified in following 
the course traced out to us by my hon. Friend -opposite, with all 
that authority which he, as he justly states, derives from his vene- 
rable youth. I cannot agree with the hon. Gentleman in thinking 
that our best course is to suffer her Majesty's Government to go on 
in their own way, and give us the measures which they have pre- 
pared, seeing that the way in which they have been for some time 
going on is an exceedingly bad one. Sir, the ground on which I 
support the motion of my noble Friend is this — I conceive that 
Ireland is in a most unsatisfactory, and, indeed, alarming condi- 
tion. I conceive, though for the remote causes of the disorders of 
Ireland neither the present Government nor any living statesmen 
are responsible — that the immediate causes of those disorders which 
now peculiarly alarm us, will be found in the conduct of Her Ma* 

• Hansard, 3d Series, vol. Ixxii. p. 1169-1194. 



SfAfK OF tRteLAKI). 17? 

jesty*s present advisers. I conceive that when those disorders had 
reached in autumn an alarming height, her Majesty's Ministers did 
not show in any part of their conduct, either by their legislation ot 
their administration, that they justly appreciated the nature of 
those disorders, or were aware of the proper mode in which they 
should be treated. I see no signs of promise for the future of a 
policy better than that which they have hitherto followed. I look 
forward, certainly, with deep uneasiness to the state of Ireland. I 
conceive that, in such circumstances, it is the constitutional right 
and duty of this House to interfere ; and I conceive that my noble 
Friend, by inviting us to go into a Committee of the whole House, 
has proposed a mode of interference which is at once perfectly par- 
liamentary and convenient, as it is undoubtedly called for. Now, 
as to the first of these propositions, it will not be necessary for me 
to waste any time in an attempt to show that the condition of Ire- 
land is one which may justly inspire great anxiety and alarm. On 
that point I conceive that both sides of the House are fully agreed. 
That country, Sir, in extent about one-fourth of the United King- 
dom, in population certainly more than one-fourth ; superior, pro- 
bably, in internal fruitfuiness to any area of equal size in Europe; 
possessed of a position which holds out the greatest facilities for 
commerce, at least equal to any other country of the same extent 
in the world ; an inexhaustible nursery of the finest soldiers ; a 
country beyond all doubt of far higher consequence to the prospe- 
rity and greatness of this Empire than all its far distant dependen- 
cies, were they multiplied four or five times over ; superior to 
Canada added to the West Indies, and these both conjoined with 
our possessions at the Cape and in Australasia, and with all the 
wide dominions of the Moguls — sucli is the state to which you have 
reduced it, that it is a source not of confidence and strength, but of 
alarm and weakness. How do you govern it? Not by love, but by 
fear ; not as you govern Great Britain, but as you govern the recently- 
conquered Scinde ; not by the confidence of the people in the laws 

8* 



)78 Si ATE OF tfttilAKD. 

fella their attachment to the Constitution, but by means of armed met 
arid entrenched camps. Undoubtedly this is a fact which, if we knew 
Nothing more, would fully justify the House of Commons in entering 
'nto a grave inquiry, in older to ascertain why these things are so, 
That these things are so, is undoubtedly to be ascribed, as I said, 
partly to remote causes, independent of any which have a bearing 
on the parties of the present day. To dwell long on those remote 
causes would be out of place, and would occupy the attention of 
the house unnecessarily; and yet 1 think we can hardly do justice 
to this enquiry except by taking at least a hasty glance at them. 
When we seek for the primary causes of these disorders, we must 
look back to a period not only beyond the existence of the present 
or late administrations — beyond the time of any living statesmen, 
but to times anterior to those in which the party names of Whig 
or Tory were first pronounced — anterior to those of the Puritans, 
to whom the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Mr. Disraeli,) in his 
v T ery ingenious speech, attributed the calamities of Ireland — ante- 
rior even to the Reformation. Sir, the primary cause of the evils 
of Ireland is undoubtedly the manner in which that country became 
annexed to the English Crown. It was effected by conquest, and 
conquest of a peculiar kind. The mere annexation of the country 
to the English dominion would have been no disadvantage to Ire- 
land, and might have been a benefit to both ; but it was not a 
conquest like those we have been accustomed to witness in modern 
Europe. It was not a conquest like that which united Lorraine to 
France, or Silesia to Prussia. It was a conquest of a different kind, 
well known in ancient times, and down to our own days practised 
in rude or semi-civilized nations — the conquest of race over race, 
such a conquest as established the dominion of the Mnhrattas in 
Gwalior, or that of the Spaniards over the American Indians. 
That, I think, was the first great cause of these disorders, and the 
effect has not by any means ceased to act. I believe the very worst 
of tyrannies that can exist is the tyranny of race over race. 1 



STATE OF IRELAND. 119 

believe that no enmity which ever existed between nations separated 
by seas and mountains, aggravated as it may have been by iong 
enmity, has ever approached the intense bitterness which is che- 
rished by nations towards each other, when they are geographi- 
cally and locally intermingled, and yet have never morally amal- 
gamated. And has not a feeling like that which reigned in thi 
breasts of the Spaniards and Mahrattas towards their conquered 
slaves been excited, by your own boasting and taunts, in a great 
part of the people of England towards their brethren in Ireland ? 
It might have been hoped that the lapse of time and the conse- 
quences of civilization would have Mealed the original evil —that 
what we have seen in our own country, which formerly suffered 
under the same evil, and suffered most cruelly, would have taken 
place also in Ireland. Here Celt and Saxon — Dane and Norman 
— all have been fused down and melted together, to form the oreat 
and united English people. A similar amalgamation, we might 
have hoped; would have taken place in Ireland; and I believe it 
would, but for the circumstances under which it was attempted tc 
force the Information on that country. Then came new divisions 
to strengthen and embitter the old. The English colonists adopted 
the new doctrines as they had been embraced in England ; the 
aborigines remained true to the ancient faith, alone among all the 
nations of the North of Europe. Then a new line of demarcation 
was drawn ; theological antipathies were added to the 'previous dif- 
ferences, and revived the dying animosity of race, continuing dis- 
sensions and perpetuating a feud which has descended to our own 
times. Then came the occurrences to which the lion. Member for 
Shrewsbury referred in his speech. It unfortunately so happened 
that the spirit of liberty in England was closely allied with that 
spirit in theology which was most zealously opposed to the Catholic 
Church. It did so happen that those who wished for arbitrary 
government during the 17th century, were closely allied with the 
leaders of the old religion, and not with its theological oppouents 



180 STATE OF IRELAND. 

Such men on the one hand a? Pym. Hampden, and Milton, 
however eminent defenders of freedom, though upholding in 
their widest extent the doctrines of free discussion and religious 
liberty, vet always made one execution to their tolerance — the 
Roman Catholics. On the other hand, those princes who never 
respected the free lights of conscience in any Protestant dissenters, 
all betrayed a propensity, to favour the religion of their Catholic 
subjects. James I. regarded them with no aversion ; Charles I. 
showed them great favour and attachment; Charles [1. was a con- 
cealed Catholic ; James II. was an avowed Catholic. In this 
manner it happened, throughout the whole of that century, that 
our slavery and their freedom meant one and the same tiling, and 
that the very events, dates, and names which in the mind of an 
Englishman were associated with the glory and prosperity of his 
country, were associated in that of an Irishman with all that had 
worked the ruin and degradation of his. Take the name of Wil- 
iiam III., the memory of the battle of the Boyne. 1 never recol- 
lect being so forcibly struck with anything as with a circumstance 
which occurred on a day I have every reason to remember with 
gratitude and pride — the day when I had the honour of being 
declared Member for Leeds. While I was chaired, I observed that 
all the windows were filled with Orange ribbons, and the streets 
crowded with persons wearing orange favours : all these were in 
favour of Catholic Emancipation, and animated with the strongest 
feeling to contend for equality of rights being granted to their 
Catholic fellow-subjects. I could not help observing, that the 
Orange ribbon seemed rather incongruous. " Not at all," was the 
answer; "under an Orange flag the Whigs of Yorkshire have 
always banded together. An Orange flag was carried before Sir 
George Saville, one of the first persons who stood here on the basis 
of equal rights for all." The very chair in which I sat, it was 
added, was the chair in which Lord Milton had been carried, when 
jja gained the victory in the great cause of religious liberty against 



S'lATF. OF TT.'Kl.ANl). 181 

Lord Ilarewood. Now, what effect would tliis have produced in 
Limerick ? It would have boon at once considered as a mark of 
triumph over and insult to the Catholic, party, marking a disagree- 
ment at every point in the history and even of the moral being of 
these two nations. Twice during' the century of which I have been 
speaking the Catholic population rose against the Protestants; 
they were twice put down, and both times with a large annexation 
of land on the one side, and confiscation of property with the inflic- 
tion of severe penalties on the othor. The first insurrection was 
put down by Oliver Cromwell, the second by King William. 
Each of these omineut leaders, after his victory, proceeded to esta- 
blish a system of his own. That of Cromwell was simple— strong, 
fierce, hateful, cruel ; it might be comprised in one word, which, as 
Lord Clarendon tells us, was then constantly uttered in the Eng- 
lish army — extirpation. What would have been the consequence 
if he had lived no one can tell, but his object is stated to have been 
to make Ireland completely English ; however, he died, and his 
plans were interrupted. This policy vanished. The policy adopted 
by William III. and his advisers was, in seeming, certainly less 
cruel, but whether in reality less cruel I have my doubts. The 
Irish Catholics were to live, multiply, and replenish the earth. ; but 
they were to be what the Helots were in Sparta, or the Greeks 
under the Ottoman, or what the man of colour now is in Pennsyl- 
vania. The Catholic was to be excluded from every office of 
honour and profit; his every step in the road of life was to be fet- 
tered by some galling restriction. If desirous of military glory, he 
was to be told, you may go and gain it in the armies of Austria or 
France; if he felt an inclination for political science, he might 
meddle in the diplomacy of Italy and Spain ; but if he remained 
at home, he was a mere Gibeonite — a " hewer of wood and drawei 
of water." Pad laws badly administered, fostered and increased 
the ill feeling thus begun ; and to this period and to these laws 
may be referred the peculiar and unfortunate relations between 



jv<5 StATfe OF tkELA^n. 

landlord and tenant which to this day deform the social state of* 
Ireland. A combination of rustic tyrants was opposed by a host 
of rustic banditti, who appeared under various names, at intervals 
of four or five years, during the whole of the last century. Courts 
of law and juries existed only for the benefit of the dominant sect, 
The priesthood, of which we heard some anecdotes the other night, 
and very striking they were, who were revered by millions as the 
dispensers of the Christian sacraments and the great teachers of 
Truth, who were considered by them as their natural guides and 
only protectors, were ordinarily treated by the dominant faction, 
including the bulk of the gentry of the country, as no man of 
common good nature would treat the vilest beggar. A century 
passed away, and the French Revolution awakened a spirit of 
liberty throughout Europe. Jacobinism was not a natural ally of 
Catholicism, but oppression and misery produce strange coalitions, 
and such a coalition was formed. A third struggle against Pro- 
testant ascendancy was put down by the sword, and it became the 
duty of the men at the head of affairs to consider what measures 
should be adopted to give for the first time peace and good order 
to Ireland. Little as I revere the memory of Mr. Pitt, I must con- 
fess that, comparing the plan he formed with the policy of Crom- 
well and William, he deserves praise for great wisdom and huma- 
nity. The Union of Ireland with Great Britain was part of his 
plan, an excellent and essential part of it, but still only a part. Tt 
never ought to be forgotten that his scheme was much widei in 
extent, and that he was not allowed to carry it into effect. He 
wished to unite not only the kingdoms, but the hearts and affec- 
tions of the people. For that object the Catholic disabilities were 
to be removed, the Catholic clergy were to be placed in an honour- 
able, comfortable, and independent position, and Catholic education 
was to be conducted on a liberal scale. His views and opinions 
agreed with, and were, I have no doubt, taken from those of Mr 
Burke, a man of an understanding even more enlarged and capa 



STATE OF IRELAND. 183 

cious than his own. If Mr. Pitt's system had been carried into 
effect, I believe that the Union with Ireland would now have been 
j« fullv secure, and as far out of the reach of agitation, as tlu 
Union with Scotland. The Act of Union would then have beer 
associated in the minds of the great body of the Catholic Iris! 
people with the removal of most galling disabilities. All their 
religious and national feelings would have been bound up with tin 
English connection ; and the Parliament in College-green would 
have been remembered as the most tyrannical, the most oppress- 
ive, the most venal, according to its deserts, the most corrupt 
assemblv that ever sat on the face of the earth. In saying this, I 
can be giving no offence to any Gentleman from Ireland, how 
strong soever his national or political feelings may be, for I only 
repeat the sentiment which has been expressed by one of his own 
countrymen. Mr. Wolf Tone said— . 

"I have seen the corruption of Westminster Hall, I have seen jobbing of 
all sorts in colonial legislatures, I have seen corruption in the Council of 
Five Hundred, but anything bordering on the infamy of College-greeu 
never entered the heart of man to conceive." 

Not only, I say, would the Union, if the measures I have alluded 
to had passed, have been associated in the minds of the Catholic 
population of Ireland with great wrongs removed, with great bene- 
fits received, but those benefits must have inspired a corresponding 
feeling of gratitude, because they were conferred when England 
was at the height of her power, and in the moment of victory. I 
believe if those measures had passed, we should not now have been 
contending with agitation for the Repeal of the Union. Unhap- 
pilv, however, the Union alone, of al! the measures planned by 
Mr. Pitt, was carried, and the Irish Catholics found that they had 
not the name of national independence, that which to them, how 
ever little its intrinsic worth, was a source of pride, and that they 
had obtained no compensation by an addition of civil and religioia 
;;[><3rty. Hence the Union, instead of being associated in thei* 



184 STATE OF IRELAND. 

minds with penal codes abolished generously, and religious disa- 
bilities swept away, became an emblem of disappointed hopes anc 
violated pledges. Nevertheless, it was not even then too late. I 
was not too late in 1813 ; it was not too late in 1821 ; it was no* 
too late even in 1825; if the same men who were then, as they 
are now, high in the service of the Crown, would have made up 
their minds to say that which they were forced to say four years 
later ; even then the benefits of the policy of Mr. Pitt might have 
been realized. The apparatus of agitation was not then organized, 
the Government was under no coercion ; that which was afterwards 
given in 1829 might have been given with honour and advantage, 
and might, most probably would, have secured the gratitude of the 
Irish Catholic people. But in 1829 concession was made, and 
largely made — made, too, without conditions, wdiich Mr. Pitt would 
undoubtedly have imposed— but still made reluctantly, and with 
obvious dislike — made confessedly while the Government was in a 
state of duresse, and made from the dread of civil war. Was that 
concession calculated to inspire the minds of the Irish Catholics 
with gratitude and content? Had it not rather a tendency tc 
inspire the minds of those Irish Catholics with a feeling and opinion 
to be most deeply lamented, that they could only obtain redress 
by opposing the Government ; with the evil effects of Which we 
are at this day contending ? Could these men forget that they had 
been coming before the English Parliament for twenty-seven years 
as suppliants, representing, pleading the justice of their cause — 
urging the rights of conscience and the civil liberty of the subject 
— pointing to previous solemn pledges, to the promises of Mr. Pitt, 
even to the supposed promise of George IV. when Prince of Wales ; 
and pleading and urging all these reasonable arguments in vain? 
Could they forget that the most profound thinkers, the most elo- 
quent orators, had waked arid toiled in their cause in the English 
Parliament— and had failed to procure them redress. Mr. Pitt 
endeavoured to fulfil his pledge, and he was driver* from oftie& 



STATE OF IRELAND. 185 

Lord Orel .ille and Lord Grey endeavoured to do less indeed than 
Mr. Pitt proposed, but some portion of that which Mr. Pitt pro- 
posed to carry into effect, and they too in turn were obliged to 
abandon power. Then came Mr. Canning; lie took part with the 
Catholics, and he was rewarded by being worried and hunted to 
death, by the party which is now in office, and of which he was 
perhaps the most distinguished member. And when he, one of 
the brightest ornaments of Parliament and the eloquent advocate 
of the Catholic cause, was laid in his grave, then the Catholics 
began to look to themselves for aid, to display that formidable 
array of force, just keeping within the limits of the law, which soon 
produced most memorable consequences, and led to a result which 
their noblest advocates had been unable to achieve. Within two 
years after that great man was carried broken-hearted to his resting 
place in Westminster Abbey, everything he could have done — nay 
more than he could have done — was effected. Was it possible, then, 
that from that moment there should not have been an opinion 
deeply rooted in the minds of the whole Catholic population of 
Ireland, that from England, or, at all events, from that powerful 
party Which governed England, nothing was to be got by reason 
or by justice, but everything by fear? However, the concession 
was made at last, but made so that it deserved no gratitude, and 
obtained none. The organization of agitation was complete. The 
leaders of the people had tasted the pleasure of power and distinc- 
tion ; the people themselves had grown accustomed to excitement. 
Grievances enough remained, God knows, behind to serve as pre- 
texts for agitation, and the people were imbued with a sense that 
nothing was to be got by pleading, and justice would only be 
Awarded to power. These I call the remote causes of the difficulty 
j?e have now to deal with ; these are the causes which explain a 
great p.irt of that immense mass of discontent and morbid feeling 
which has come down to us in our day, as a proof of the constant, 
uninterrupted misgovernment of Ireland from the reign of Jlenrj 



186 S-ATK OF IRELAND. 

II. to that of William IV. These are the evils with which the 
statesmen of the present time have to deal. And now for the imme- 
diate cause of the present alarming- condition of Ireland. There is, I 
conceive, if I understand it rightly, a great predisposition to disease, 
but not of absolute paroxysm. Ireland is always combustible, but 
not always on fire. The right hon. Baronet opposite, during that 
time when he appeared before the public as a candidate for the 
high situation heat present fills, announced himself under the title 
of a physician, and he used several metaphors, if I remember 
rightly, drawn from the situation of a medical man at the bedside 
of a patient. If I were to follow out the metaphors of the right 
hon. Gentleman, I should say that Ireland — I do not accuse the 
right hon. Baronet of having poisoned his patient who was in an 
ill state of body, but that the malady was one which, by former 
good treatment, had been long kept under, and one which, by the 
continuance of such treatment, might have been subdued, until the 
whole system had become, in the course of time, restored, and the 
patient gradually placed in a sound and healthy condition. But 
the right lion. Baronet's policy has been to apply irritants, which 
have produced nothing but a series of paroxysms — every one more 
powerful than its predecessor — and now the condition of the 
patient, unless you adopt most decisive measures, threatens a most 
formidable crisis. It is impossible to doubt that the Administra- 
tion of Lord Melbourne was populai with the great body of the 
Catholic population of Ireland. It is impossible to doubt that the 
two viceroys he sent over to Ireland received a larger share of 
approbation from the great body of the Irish people than any vice- 
roys from the time of William III. We know that during his 
Administration great perils threatened the Empire in other quar- 
ters ; but we know also, that to wiuitever quarter the Government 
might look with apprehension, to Ireland they might look with 
confidence. When some d-ekigiung men raised disturbances io 

gsglsmd, a»d an insurrection wa§ threatened, troops couki ta 



STATE OF IRELAND. 18* 

Spared from Ireland. Wlien an insurrection broke out in one of 
our colonies — an insurrection, too, in which it might be supposed 
the Irish Catholics would be inclined to sympathise, seeing that i< 
was the insurrection of a Catholic population against an English 
Protestant domination, even then the Catholics of Ireland remained 
tiue in all things to the general Government of the Empire, and 
Ireland could spare troops to suppress the insurrection in Canada 
And no one, I believe, doubts, that if in 1840 there had been an 
unfortunate necessity to go to war, and if a foreign power had sent 
an army such as once before appeared there on the shores of Mun- 
ster, that army would have met with as warm a reception as if it 
had landed on the coast of Kent or of Norfolk ; and no one doubts 
that there would have been a general determination on the part of 
the Catholic population to defend and support the Throne of Queen 
Victoria. Under what circumstances and by what means were 
these effects produced ? Not by great legislative boons, conferred 
by the Government upon the Irish people — for that Government, 
although it had the inclination, had not the power, against the 
strength of a powerful minority in this House, and of a decided 
majority in the other House, to carry any such legislative measure. 
No, it was merely the effect of an Executive Administration, which, 
crossed and thwarted as it was at every turn, contending, as it had 
to contend, against the whole power of the Established Church, 
and a very formidable portion of the aristocracy and the landed 
gentry, yet, with such means and such powers as it had, endeavour- 
ing honestly and in good faith to remove the. religious distinctions 
which had been maintained in practice after they were abolished 
by the law, and to conciliate the affections of the Irish people. 
And I cannot help thinking that if that Administration had been 
as strong in Parliamentary support as the present, if it had been 
able to carry into full effect measures for extending to Ireland the 
benefits of the British Constitution, that in one generation, by such 
administration and legislation, the Union would have been as secure 



18S STATU 0* ltlfcLAfcD. 

against popular agitation as is the trial by jury, or the most 
revered part of our Constitution. But this was not to be. During 
six years an Opposition, powerful in numbers, formidable in ability', 
selected the Administration of Ireland as the object of their 
fiercest, deadliest attacks. Those Lord Lieutenants who were most 
popular in Ireland were assailed as no others had ever been 
assailed ; and assailed, too, for those very efforts of their adminis- 
tration which were the chief causes of the conciliation of the Irish 
people. Every legislative Act, too, without exception, introduced 
by that Government for the advantage of Ireland, was either 
rejected altogether, or mutilated. A few Catholic gentlemen, men 
of eminent ability and stainless character, were placed in situations 
which I can only say were below their talents and desert. Thoso 
appointments were hailed with great satisfaction by their country- 
men. And no wonder ! For 150 years of proscription, of bRn anc 
oppression, during which the powers of eloo^ience, as great as those 
of my right hon. Friend the Member for Dungarvon, and of other 
ornaments of his country, wither in utter obscurity under penal 
and disabling laws — after a century and a half of proscription, 
during which no Irish Catholic attained to those honours in the 
State to which his talents and character were entitled, unless he 
apostatised from his faith, and betrayed his country — at last a 
Catholic was sworn in of Her Majesty's Privy Council ; a Catholic 
took his seat at the Board of Treasury ; and another appeared at 
the Board of Admiralty. Instantly all the underlings of the great 
Tory party raised a 'yell of rage, such as the "No Popery" mob of 
Lord George Gordon, to whom reference has this night been made, 
could never have surpassed. That is one example of the feeling 
which was exhibited with regard to the Catholics, and of which we 
have not been without manifestations in this debate. The leaders 
of the party, indeed, even at that time seldom joined in that cry— 
although I could mention one, and, perhaps, even two eminent 
instances to the contrary — but the leaders of the party were 



STATK OF IRELAND. iSiJ 

accused of listening to it, and of enjoying it ; ot encouraging il, 
and of benefiting by it. It was not necessary for their purposes 
that thuy should do more. Still there were some public expres- 
sions used which sanctioned that outcry. " Aliens !" was the 
phrase used by one leader. u Minions of Popery" was the term 
employed by another. The Catholic priesthood, regarded with the 
deepest reverence and love by their flocks — and, from all I have 
heard, I believe they deserve that reverence — were assailed with 
most scurrilous epithets and rancorous abuse. They were called a 
"demon priesthood," and "surpliced ruffians." They were stig- 
matised from the Protestant pulpit as " priests of Baal" and as 
"false prophets" whose blood, like that of Jezebel, was to be licked 
by dogs. Not content with throwing these obstacles in the way of 
the Executive Government, and mutilating every measure brough 
in for the benefit of Ireland : the Opposition of that day assumed 
an offensive attitude, and determined on brimHnff in a measure of 
their own for depriving Ireland of one of her advantages. They 
called it a measure for the Registration of Electors, but they now 
admit that it was an Act of Disfranchisement. I desire to take my 
description of that measure from no lips but their own, and what 
they would not then admit they admit most fully now. We said, 
if vou impose a much more stringent mode of registration, you 
disfranchise the great body of the Irish voters. You denied it then, 
vou admit it now. Am I to believe that you did not know all this 
as well in 1840 as in 1844? Has one fact been stated now that 
was unknown then ? Lias a single argument been brought forward 
now that was not then urged, and urged twenty, thirty, forty times 
on the floor of this House? But your explanation is, that the 
responsibility of office now rests upon you — that is, that you use 
your power to injure your country only when you are in Opposi- 
tion, as a means of getting into office. Well, Sir, in place thes8 
Gentlemen are. It was very fit that such service should have its 
reward. It has had its reward. Several <^ :us<>s concurred to place 



HiO SlAtE Of Ireland. 

them in the situation they now fill ; but I believe the prlncipa 
cause to have been the discontent which they excited in England 
against the Irish policy of the late Government. I believe that to 
have been the principal cause— and that it was a principal cause 
will hardly be denied. But in the eagerness for the contest they 
called up a spirit more easily evoked than laid — the spirit of reli 
gious intolerance. That spirit placed them in power, and theu 
began their punishment, which continues to this day, a memorabl 
warning to unscrupulous ambition. It was pleasant for them to 
hear the sermons of the Kcv. Hugh M'Neile ; to hear their cause 
represented by the High Churchmen, the Low Churchmen, and the 
Dissenters, as the cause of the Gospel, struggling against spurious 
Liberalism which made no distinction between religious truth and 
religious falsehood, — it was pleasant to hear that their opponents 
were the servants of Antichrist, the slaves of the Man of Sin, and 
marked with the Sign of the Beast ; but when thev came into 
power, they found they had to govern in this island and in Ireland 
about 8,000,000 of Catholics, who had been constantly, by them- 
selves or their followers, insulted and defamed — what was the 
necessary result? I give them the fullest credit for not wishing tc 
do the country the smallest harm — that was not necessary for the 
overthrow of their political opponents ; and I give them credit for 
all the declarations they have lately made as to their desire tc 
appoint Catholics to place in office. I believe in their sincerity, 
when they say they would wish to find a Conservative Catholic 
lawyer at the Trish Bar to elevate to the Bench. Nothing, nc 
doubt, would delight them more than* to find a Catholic Conserva- 
tive Gentleman of good talent for business, and ability of speak- 
ing, to assist them in the business of Government. I believe all 
this ; but they say, they cannot promote their enemies ; and what I 
want to know is — why are all the Catholics in the Empire their 
enemies? Was such a thing ever heard of before? Here are 
8,000,000 of people of all sorts of professions, all sorts of charac- 



STATE OF IRELAND. 191 

ters, of all ranks, the Peer, the lawyer, the merchant the peasant, 
ranging from the Hereditary Earl Marshal, the heir of the How 
aids, the Mowbrays, and the FiUallaus, down to the poorest Catho 
lie labourer of Munster — and all these are arrayed against the 
Government — was there ever anything like it ? Is there anything 
in Catholic theology of a tendency to ally itself with Whig and 
democratic doctrines ? On the contrary, its tenets are of an oppo- 
site tendency, and without going into questions of theology, it has 
been thought that, of all forms of Christianity, Ca'holieism is that 
which attaches most importance to antiquity, which rests upon 
immemorial usage; and it would, therefore, appear consistent with 
analogv, that there should be a tendency among Roman Catholics 
to Conservatism. And so I believe it will be found. In the Civil 
War, was there a single Catholic in the army of Fairfax? How 
many did they think fought against Charles I. ? Not one. They 
were all arrayed under his banner. And when the reward of 
5,000/. was placed upon the head of Charles II., Catholics of all 
ranks were found faithful to him, and amongst them he took 
refuge. Who stood so firmly as the peasantry of that faith to the 
cause of monarchy ? It was so in La Vendee — it was so in the 
Tyrol — it was so in Spain ; and are we now to believe that under a 
fair Government, a just Government, an equal Government, the pro- 
fessors of the Catholic faith in Ireland would not be found friendly to 
that Government ? My own belief is, that the Tory party made the 
greatest blunder they ever committed when they threw the Catho- 
lics overboard. My belief is, that those who are acquainted with 
Mr. Burke's writings, which I believe were the source whence Mr. 
Pitt drew most of his opinions with regard to Ireland, will be 
aware that Mr. Burke considered the attachment of the Catholics 
of Ireland to the Government might be well secured if the Govern- 
ment treated them with, kindness, and that their attachment would 
be a great barrier against the inroads of Jacobinism, under the 
influence of that opinion, he wag iii the latter part of his life the 



|C)2 STATE OF IRELAND. 

warm advocate of the Catholics. He justly considered that th< 
alliance between a large portion of the aristocracy, with the vene- 
rable institutions of the country, and the ancient Church to which 
they were attached, was so material, that nothing But madness 
could prevent the alliance. That opportunity of forming snch an 
alliance was thrown away by the pretended disciples of Mr. Pitt, 
who, professing to drink his health on his birth-day, as the saviour 
of his nation, have renounced every one of his principles. Now 
see where all this ends. You are forced to bestow your patronage 
among the Protestants, that class of ultra Protestants who may be 
called Orangemen, though I do not speak of them as connected 
with Orange Societies. Then these appointments must necessarily 
increase the discontent of the Roman Catholic body, and this dis- 
content goes on producing and reproducing, and will continue to 
go on, and will go on reproducing similar results, unless Parlia- 
ment shall furnish a great and decisive remedy. By the principles 
upon which the present Government, I believe, acts, as far as 
respects all favour of the Crown, the great measure of Emancipa- 
tion is utterly annihilated. Of all the boons that were supposed to 
have been conferred by the Act passed in 1829, Catholics of Ire- 
Ian I have, as far as I conceive, obtained only one, and that is, 
admission to Parliament; and they would not have, possessed even 
that, if the present Government, when in opposition, had been able 
to P U their Irish Registration Bill. The wounded national spirit, 
the wounded religious spirit now breaks out, and shows itself in a 
hundred forms, some of which I abhor, and some I condemn, but 
none excite my amazement, and all seem the natural effects of 
gross miscovemment, acting on strong sensibility. You refuse to 
admit the° Roman Catholic to a fair and full communion in the 
Constitution, and he, therefore, finds out a narrow local patriotism, 
confined to Ireland. Turn where he will he sees every office, anu 
1 may add, stall, filled with those whom he considers, and not 
without reason, as his enemies. What more Batumi to that » 



STATE OF IRELAND. 193 

people in such a situation should set up their own tribune, against 
the regular constitutional authorities of the country! They all 
remember, and it would be strange if they did not, what their union, 
under the same guidance as now, extorted from your fears, in 1829, 
and they have determined to try whether similar effects cannot be 
produced from the same means in 1844. These are your difficulties, 
and they are of your own making. Great statesmen have some- 
times brought themselves into difficulties, and have yet retrieved 
their credit for wisdom and firmness by the manner in which they 
extricated themselves. Let us see then, how you meet your diffi- 
culties ; and first with regard to legislation. The beginning and 
the end of all your legislation, last Session, for the evils of Ireland 
were comprised in your Arms Bill. There was no conciliation in 
that ; and it was not worthy the name of a measure of coercion, 
but simply a measure of petty annoyance. It satisfied the desires 
and was sanctioned by the judgment of neither side of the House. 
We called for a boon of a different sort for Ireland, whilst your 
Friends, or many of them, called for a still more vigorous coercive 
measure ; and one noble and learned Lord was so much struck by 
your remissness in this respect, that he even bestowed some of his 
own great abilities in framing an Irish Coercion Bill. The fruit of 
your legislative wisdom in the last Session of Parliament, then, is 
the x\rms Bill only. Then, as to the executive measures of admi- 
nistration which you have dealt out to Ireland, during the recess, 
I protest in the strongest manner against what was said by the 
noble Lord the Secretary for the Colonies, the last night the House 
met, that in his opinion no reasonable man could find fault with 
the Government on this ground, because it was proved that it had 
done all that was possible. Now by the statement of the Govern- 
ment itself, it appeared plain that the Proclamation against the 
Clontarf meeting was agreed to on the Friday morning ; and for 
them to say that it could not have been made known in Dublin 
and its suburbs until after dark on the Saturday evening was an 
roi. ii. 8 



J 94 STATU OF IRELAND. 

absurdity. Tt was idle to weigh the words of a Proclamation a* 
such a time when they should have been occupied in weighing Uk 
lives of the Queen's subjects. No rational person will venture he 
say, if there had been in the minds of the rulers of Ireland a proper 
sense of the hazards they were running, that that Proclamation 
could not have been published in Dublin and its neighbourhood 
early on Saturday morning, by which the hazard of the loss of 
many lives might have been avoided. And by whose agency was 
that evil warded oft'? By the interposition of the man you have 
prosecuted. Fortune stood your friend, and he stood your friend, 
and it was by his exertion mainly that, in all probability, a scene 
more terrible than that which occurred at Manchester was pre- 
vented. But I will pass from that, and come to the prosecution. 
The charge I make against this prosecution is one and simple 
The one main charge I bring against the Government is this, thai 
they seemed not to have considered the nature of such a prosecu- 
tion ; that they regarded it as proceeding in a suit of meum and 
tuum, in a qui tarn action for the recovery of penalties. They con- 
sidered nothing but this — whether they could get together such 
evidence as to facts, and such opinions as to law, as would entitle 
them to a verdict and a judgment. Now, my opinion is, that both 
the verdict and judgment in a great political case are the very 
smallest part to be considered. What the Government has to ask 
itself, when instituting a great public prosecution, is, will our mode- 
ration and justice stand the test of public opinion ? What will be 
the effect produced on the public mind by our proceedings ? Of 
course, the law must be strictly observed, but that is only one of 
the conditions of a public prosecution. To make it wise in th 
Government to adopt such a measure as a prosecution, it is neces 
sary that its conduct should be such, not only Unit it could not be 
questioned, but that prejudice itself could not cavil at it. You 
were instituting a prosecution against an individual of whom I fee! 
considerable delicacy in speaking in his present situation— a situa- 



StAtE OF IKKLASH. 1 95 

tion which, however, did not, prevent an lion. Member from vin- 
dictively assailing him, which but one man in this House would 
do. My belief is that, as regards the end that lion. Gentleman has 
lately been pursuing, it is not only mischievous but wholly unat- 
tainable. I regard with deep disapprobation some of the means 
pursued to obtain that end ; and in saying this, I wish to speak 
with the respect that is due to eminence and misfortune ; but with 
the respect that is due to truth. I must say, too, that the position 
which Mr. O'Connell holds in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen, i9 
a position such as no popular leader in the whole history of man* 
kind ever occupied. You are mistaken if you imagine that tli€ 
interest he inspires is confined to this island. Go where you will 
upon the Continent, dine at any tabic d'hote, tread upon any 
steam-boat, enter any conveyance, from the moment your speech 
betrays you to be an Englishman, the very first question asked — 
whether by the merchants or manufacturers in the towns in the 
heart of France, or by the peasant, or by the class who are like our 
yeomen, the first question asked is, what has become of Mr. 
O'Connell ? [" Oh, oh."] Let those who deny this assertion take the 
trouble to cross the Channel and they will soon be convinced of its 
truth. Let them only turn over the French journals. It is a most 
unfortunate, a most unhappy fact — but it is impossible to dispute 
— that there is throughout the Continent, a feeling respectincr the 
connection between England and Ireland not very much unlike 
that which exists with respect to the connection between Russia 
and Poland. I do not approve of this feeling, but it is natura 
that it should exist. Without adverting to the immense jealousy 
which the great power of England produces, I may remind th 
House that the Irish agitation has on the Continent two aspects 
which enlist the sympathies in common of Rovalists and Demo- 
crats. As a popular movement, it is looked upon with favour by 
the extreme left in France, or by the democratic part; while, by 
its inv( Iving the cause of Catholicism; it obtains for itself thecoun 



196 bfrktit of ittfeLAS'i). 

tenanee of the extreme right, and of those who espouse the caiist 
of the Pretender ; and in this manner it has probably created a 
wider interest and more support on the Continent of Europe than 
any other question of our domestic politics was ever known to 
command. I do not, it is unnecessary for me to say, urge this for 
the purpose of frightening the English Government ; but I do say, 
that on such a question, it is of the greatest importance that the 
proceedings which the Government have taken should be beyond 
impeachment, and that they should not have sought a victory in 
such a way that victory should be to them' a greater disaster than 
a defeat. Has not that been the result? First, is it denied tha», 
Mr. O'Connell has suffered wrono-? Is it denied that if the law 
had been carried into effect without those irregularities and that 
negligence which has attended the Irish Trials, Mr. O'Connell's 
chance of acquittal would have been better — no person denied 
that. The affidavit which has been produced, and which has not 
been contradicted, states that twenty-seven Catholics were excluded 
from the Jury List. [Mr. Shell : Hear.] My right lion, and 
learned Friend, whose voice I hear, is competent to do more justice 
to this part of the subject than I possibly can. But take even the 
statement made the other night to the House by the right hon. and 
learned Gentleman opposite, the Recorder of the city of Dublin. 
lie said, that twenty-four names, the majority of which were 
Roman Catholics, had been omitted. It is very easy to talk of 
720 names being reduced to forty-eight; but what is the forty- 
eighth part of 720? Fifteen. Now, if these fifteen names hap- 
pened to be Roman Catholics, there was an even chance, that ano- 
ther Catholic would be one of the fortv-eioht. But it is admitted, 
that twenty-seven Catholics were omitted from the list ; and this 
would give almost an even chance of there being two Catholics 
among the forty-eight. Will any human being tell me that Mr. 
O'Connell has not, by that violation of the law, suffered a distinct 
wrong? Will any person say, that it is impossible, or that it is 



STATE OF IRELAND. 107 

not even very highly probable, that a different result might have 
taken place but for this blunder ? For, remember the power which 
the law gives to any one juryman. It is in the power of any jury- 
man, if liis mind is made up, to effect a conviction or an acquittal. 
But is this my opinion alone ? What is the language of Judge 
Ferrin ? As I find reported in the papers favourable to the pro- 
secution, he said, that in the getting up this part of the case there 
were great negligence, failure of duty in regard to the striking of 
the Jury, and that he was not prepared to say, that that was the 
result of accident, or that there were not circumstances of suspicion. 
Why, this was the statement of one of the Judges; and when the 
noble Lord calls upon us to pay respect to what the Judges say, 
are we not bound to regard his words? That learned Judge must 
necessarily know better than I can, or than any other Englishman 
can, what sort of tricks are likely to be practised in the striking of 
a jury in Ireland, and he says that he is not satisfied that this 
blunder was the effect of accident. But I now come nearer to the 
business — I come to the right hon. Baronet, the Secretary of State 
for the Home Department, who said, and truly said, "We are not 
responsible for this." I know the right hon. Baronet is not. The 
right hon. Baronet added, " I regret it most deeply — I wish it had 
been otherwise, for I feel, that by this matter a prejudice has been 
created to the administration of justice." This is exactly what I 
regret. I say a prejudice has, by this transaction, been created to 
the administration of justice. I say the taint of suspicion has been 
thrown upon the whole of these proceedings. Nothing can be 
more true, and I wish to know what must be the practical effect 
of these words ? I wish to know whether, in a great cause upon 
which the eyes, not only of Europe, but of the civilised world, are 
fixed, it is not the only noble and manly part for the Government 
to take to say : " A mistake has taken place — that mistake has 
created a prejudice to the administration of justice, and we cannot, 
and will not, avail ourselves of the conviction so obtained," \ m 



198 STATE OF IRELAND. 

ready to take the facts as they have been stated with regard to the 
striking off the names from the list. There may be very good and 
excellent reasons, no doubt, for doing so — but does that settle the 
question ? Is not the question this — was it possible in a great 
ease, pending between two great religions and races, to have a fair 
verdict at the hands of a Jury of Protestants ? I know that all the 
technicalities of the law were on the side of the Crown, but my 
great charge against the Government is, that they have merely 
regarded this question in a technical point of view. We all know 
the principle upon which a jury de medieiate linguce was founded. 
Suppose a Dutch sailor landed on our shores in a broil stabbed an 
Englishman. For that offence he would not be left to be tried by 
twelve Englishmen. No; our ancestors knew that that was not 
the way in which justice could be obtained — they knew that the 
only proper way was to have one-half of the jurymen of the coun- 
try in which the crime was committed, and the other half of the 
country to which the prisoner belonged. If any alien had been in 
the situation of Mr. O'Connell, that law would have been observed. 
You are ready enough to call the Catholics of Ireland " aliens" 
when it suits your purpose — you are ready enough to treat them 
as aliens when you can raise a prejudice against them : but the 
first privilege, the only advantage of alienage, you practically 
deny them, when you refuse them in a case above all others requir- 
ing it, a jury de medietate linguce. Is it possible that any reason- 
able man can conceive, that in a case in which the feelings of 
two sects and creeds are set against each other, a Jury composed 
of one of these sects could do justice ? But could you not 
have avoided this? Why should you not have had a common 
Jury ? A common Sheriff's Jury, containing several respectable 
Catholics, who were not members of the Association, was not diffi- 
cult to be obtained, A trial by such a jury would have tended 
much to settle men's minds, and to conduce to the pacification and 
Quietude of the Irish portion of Her Majesty's dominious, But you 



Mfi op irELaKd. 199 

—the Government — have now got a verdict from a Jury impanelled 
»,ontrarv to law — a verdict from a jury from tl.e constitution of 
which no man could expect justice — a verdict delivered after a 
charge from the Chief Justice which lias been pronounced unpre- 
cedented, but which I will not say is unprecedented, because it so 
strongly resembles some of the charges communicated to juries in 
the State Trials which distinguished the seventeenth century ! With 
this panel — with this jury — with this charge — von have obtained 
a verdict, and what are you the better for it? Lias the verdict 
tended to quiet Ireland ? T know that Ireland is quiet at the pre- 
sent moment, and will be so probably, from the present time until 
that at which the sentence shall be executed, because the whole 
Irish people, feeling the deepest interest in the fate of that eminent 
man, their leader, will avoid doing anything which may place him 
in a more dangerous position. But your difficulties will begin 
when a prison's wall closes upon the hon. and learned Member for 
Cork. By what means do you intend to prevent a very serious 
and strong outbreak of popular feeling ? Is it possible that a mar. 
who has possessed himself so boundlessly ot the feelings of the 
Irish people is all at once to lose his popularity, because he has 
become a martyr. I am as much attached to the Union as any 
hon. Gentleman, and as much opposed >-* the demand made for ito 
Repeal. If I, who am as much attached to the Union as any 
Gentleman opposite, and who as much disitke some of the means 
which have been used to excite the people against it — if I cannot 
in my conscience say that Mr. O'Connell has had a fair trial — if 
the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir J. Graham), who tells us 
that " a prejudice has been created to the administration of jus- 
tice," cannot say it— if Englishmen, friends of the Union, cannot say 
that no suspicion lies on the verdict, and are convinced of its 
unfairness, what must be tne feelings of the people of Ireland — the 
people who agree with Mr. O'Connell, and heartily assent to all tlo 
views which he propounds to them in his ardent and enthusiastic 



205 8$Affi 6f i&tfUKb. 

speeches. And what are you to expect from liis incarceration * 
The power of his name will remain to stir up their minds, though 
you deprive them of his presence, which has been so often exerted 
in preventing their excitement from breaking into acts of violence. 
This seems to me to have been your conduct as to the past. And 
now as to the future. Your executive measures, I fear, are of the 
same sort. What have you given them hitherto '? Soldiers, bar 
racks, a useless State prosecution, and an unfair trial. And what 
have they. now to look forward to ? An unjust sentence — its inflic- 
tion, and more barracks and more soldiers. With respect to your 
legislative measures, it is true you propose a bill for the Registra- 
tion of Irish Voters, coupled with an increase of the Franchise. 
But what the provisions of that measure are we cannot as yet fore- 
see ; all we know is that the subject is one on which it is impos- 
sible for you to legislate at once with credit to yourselves and with 
benefit to the public; all that we can say with confidence is, that 
the measure must either be destructive to the representative prin- 
ciple in Ireland or to the remnant of your own character. Of the 
Landlord and Tenant Commission I say nothing. On that subject, 
too, a report is to be made, but when we shall have the report 
nobody can say. On some future occasion I may have an oppor- 
tunity of going at length into another very important question, I 
mean the Established Church in Ireland. All I can do now is to 
take some short notice of the manner in which the question lias 
been alluded to in the course of the debate. I must say that I 
have heard declarations on this subject from some Gentlemen 
opposite with which I am highly delighted. 1 only regret that 
their votes will not accompany their speeches. But from Ministers 
we have heard nothing except this — that the Established Church 
is there, and that there it must remain. As to the speech of the 
noble Lord (Lord Stanley), when I hear such a defence of the 
Establishment from a man of his eminence, what irference can I 
draw but that nothing better can be said for it ? What is the 



SfAlE OF iilfiUtfft. '201 

ttoble Lord's argument. That in 1767 and 1702, and, I believe, 
some other years, when Roman Catholics were seeking the remo- 
val of penal laws and disabilities, they did not complain of the 
Established Church as a grievance. Is it not, let me ask, perfectly 
notorious, that such is the ordinary progress of ali questions? 
When men are at a distance from their desired object-— when they, 
perhaps, so little hope of ever attaining it, they do not go the 
full length of even their just demands; but after the men who 
sought less have been thirty years in their graves, and circum- 
stances have entirely changed, their successors may have a right to 
take up a different position. The noble Lord now comes to us and 
tells us what the Catholics said when suffering under the penal 
laws, as if that were a reason for our not taking into consideration 
the state of the Church in Ireland. Why, I will give the noble 
Lord a proof to the contrary from his own practice. Does not the 
noble Lord know that during the discussions on the Slave Trade, 
all who spoke disclaimed in the most earnest manner any desire for 
the emancipation of the slaves ; nay, emancipation was not then so 
much as thought of, and the speeches of Lord Grenville, Mr. Pitt, 
Lord Howick, and of my honoured and revered friend — of whom 
I can never speak without respect and regard — Mr. Wilberforce, 
were directed against the Slave Trade, and did not say one word 
about emancipation. I know that in 1807, when the Duke of 
Northumberland, in the ardour of generous youth, rose to propose 
a bill to abolish slavery, Mr. Wilberforce pulled him down, and told 
him that their first object should be to abolish the Slave Trade. 
But did the noble Lord (Lord Stanley) feel that that was a reason 
to oe urged against him when he brought in his Bill to abolish 
slavery? When he had pointed out with so much eloquence the 
horrible evils of the whole system, suppose any man had got up 
and said that in 1792 Mr. Pitt and Mr. Wilberforce only wished 
to abolish the Slave Trade, would that have been considered an 

answer to the nobie Lord, who was anxious by his Bill to emanci- 

9* 



202 §fAffe of ifefitANB. 

pat', the slaves ? Thus the noble Lord's argument is confuted by 
his own practice. Then as to the Act of Union, it seems that the 
fifth Article sticks in the noble Lord's throat : that must on no 
account be altered. But does not the fourth Article of the same 
Act fix the number of Members who should sit in this House? 
Yet the fourth Article has notorious]} 7 been abrogated, and who 
brought in the Bill to abrogate it ? The noble Lord. Next comes 
the question of the Roman Catholic oath ; and here, were the 
noble Lord present, I might be disposed to say something more 
severe than I will utter in his absence. I will, therefore, confine 
myself to the strict bearings of the case, and putting the argument 
of ihe noble Lord .to the utmost, it amounts to this, that the Roman 
Catholic Members should walk out into the Lobby when ecclesi- 
astical questions are about to be discussed, but not that the Pro- 
testants who might be left within the House should not discuss 
and mature measures for altering the relation of the Establishment 
in Ireland, to the people ? Is it any argument to say, that when 
a particular man is tied up by an oath no one else shall presume 
to touch the matter against touching which he is bound ; that 
when the Roman Catholic Members should have left the House the 
640 remaining Members could not discuss the Oath or the pro- 
priety of altering the condition of the Established Church in Ire- 
land ? Surelv this is the strangest argument that was ever 
addressed to the House. I do hope, that the right lion. Baronet 
opposite (Sir R. Peel) will deal with the subject in a larger man- 
ner — in a manner worthy of his high position and eminent cha- 
racter. Tie I am sure will not come down with a piece of Han- 
sard, or with old declarations made in '57 and '02. I do hope 
that he will grapple with that subject like a great statesman, and 
not palter with it like a puny politician. Let him consider these 
questions: — Is the institution a wise one or a bad one ? What 
are the ends for which an Established Church exists in Ireland? 
1 )oes the Established Church in Ireland accomplish those ends? 



STATE OF IRELAND. 203 

Can a Church which has no hold in the hearts of the great body 
of the people be otherwise than useless, or worse than useless \ 
Has the Irish Protestant Church any hold in the hearts of the great 
body of the people ? Has it, during the two centuries and a half 
that it lias existed in Ireland, made any vast conquests of conver- 
sion or proselytism ? Has it been what the Churches of England 
and Scotland have been called with much justice, the poor man's 
church ? Has it nursed the great body of the people in virtue, 
consoled them in affliction, or drawn down upon itself the respect 
and reverence of the Nation and the State? To be able to answer 
these questions in the affirmative is the true and rational defence 
of the Church of Ireland, not by making quotations from forgotten 
speeches, or producing passages from mouldy petitions, presented 
in the time of George the Second, and ever since laid by with 
legislative lumber. Do not let us again be told that many years 
ago all which the Roman Catholics asked was the removal of 
certain penal laws: why, in 17o7, no Roman Catholic would have 
gone even the length of requiring admission into Parliament. 
Thev did not then carrv their demands for justice half the leWth 
of what they have since obtained. I think I have now said enough 
to justify the vote I shall give in favour of the motion of the noble 
Lord. I think that the evils we deplore have been brought upon 
Ireland by a false and pernicious policy. I think that the mode in 
which it is proposed to deal with those evils will tend, not to 
lessen, but to aggravate them. While the present svstem is pur- 
sued in Ireland it is impossible that she can be peaceable ; and, 
until Ireland is peaceable, the British empire cannot enjoy her full 
power and proper dignity. The accordance of all classes is neo\>- 
sary to her strength, and her dignity is identical with her security. 
In every negotiation, whether with France on the Right of Search, 
or with America on the Boundary, while Ireland continues discon- 
tented that fact will be uppermost in the minds of the diplomatists 
op both sides, and while it restrains and cripples the one, it will 



20-1 STATE OF IRELAND. 

embolden and invigorate the other. Such must be the necessary 
and inevitable consequence. This is, indeed, a great and splendid, 
a mighty Empire, well provided with means of annoyance, and 
with weapons of defence. She can do many things which are far 
beyond the power of any other nation in the world ; she dictated 
peace to China; she governs Australasia, and she rules Cafi'raria. 
Should occasion again arise, she could sweep from the surface of 
the ocean the commerce of the world, and, as formerly, blockade 
the ports, and spread her triumphant flag from the Baltic to the 
Adriatic. She is able to maintain her Indian Empire against every 
threatened hostility, whether by land or sea ; but, amidst all this 
vast mass of power there is one vulnerable point — one spot 
unguarded, and that spot nearest to her heart ; a spot at which, 
forty-five years ago, a deadly, happily not a fatal, blow was aimed. 
The Government and Parliament, each in its sphere, is deeply 
responsible for the continuance of such a lamentable state of things, 
and for my part of that responsibility, I intend to clear myself by 
the vote I shall give in favour of the motion of my noble Friend, 
and I trust that I shall find with me so large and respectables 
body of Members of this House, as shall satisfy the Irish Catholics 
that they still have friends in England, and that they need net yet 
relinquish all hope of protection from the wisdom and justice of ar 
Imperial Parliament. 



DISSENTERS' CHAPEL BILL. 

june 6, 1844. 

Ik ever there was an occasion on which I could desire to have 
before me the two examples, in the discussion of a measure like 
this, both as to the temper in which I should wish to debate it, 
and the temper that in speaking of it I ought to shun, then both 
these examples have been given me by the Mover of the second 
reading, and the Seconder of the Amendment. I despair, Sir, of 
adding much to the very powerful and luminous arguments of the 
hon. and learned Gentleman who, to our great joy, lias again 
appeared amongst us; but I am unwilling to allow the debate to 
proceed further without offering some observations to the House. 
Sir, I think it desirable that some person should rise on this side 
of the House, generally occupied by those the most strongly 
opposed to the existing administration, for the purpose of declaring 
a cordial and warm approbation of this honest, this excellent Bill, 
and my firm conviction, that none but the best and purest motives 
have induced the Government to bring it forward. I am glad 
also to bear my testimony to the exceedingly mild and temperate 
manner in which my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford has dis- 
cussed this subject. I most highly approve of the resolution which 
lie formed, and to which he so faithfully adhered, of treating the 
question as one of meum and tuum, and not as one of theology. 
But whatever the hon. Baronet omitted, has been fully supplied 
by the Seconder of the Amendment, for from him we have heard 
a speech, in which there was an utter and complete absence of 

* HnneariJ, 8«i Scrie^ vol Ixxv. p. 338-851. 



206 DISSENTERS i HAPEL BILL. 

everything like argument or statement of fact, in which there was 
not even a shadow of reason, and there was nought to be heard 
hut the language of theological animosity. In many of the peti- 
tions presented on this subject I have grieved to discover the 
exhibition of similar feelings, and when the lion. Member opposite, 
asks me why I do not suppose the petitioners competent to judge 
on this matter, my answer is, because they treat it as a question 
of divinity, when they should but have looked at it as a question 
of property ; and when I see them treat a question of property as 
a question of divinity, then I affirm, that however numerous they 
may be, they prove themselves not competent to judge this ques- 
tion. If the persons who desire this measure be orthodox, that is 
no reason that we should plunder others to enrich them ; and 
if they be heterodox, that is no reason why we should plunde? 
them to enrich others. I should not think it honest to support 
this Bill if I could not conscientiously declare, that whatever the 
religious persuasion may be of those interested on the occasion, my 
language and vote should be precisely the same. If instead 
of their being Unitarians, with whom I have no peculiar sympa- 
thy, it were a Bill in favour of the Catholics, of the Wesley an 
Methodists, or the Baptists ; if it were in favour of the old seces- 
sion Church of Scotland, or of the free Church of Scotland, my 
language and my vote would be precisely the same. It seems tc 
me that the point in all this matter, that on which great stress is 
laid, is the second Clause of the Bill. I can hardly conceive that 
there is any Gentleman in the House prepared to vote against the 
first Clause ; that any would vote against the third, merely because 
of a marginal error in that Clause, or that because there is a provi- 
sion respecting pending actions at law, he would vote for refusing 
a second reading to this Bill. As to the first Clause, I have heard 
of no objection made to it. My hon. Friend the Member for the 
University of Oxford, if I understood him rightly, said, that if the 
pill contained only the first Clause, it would not necessarily be 



DlSSENl'ERS' CtTAtm MLL. 20? 

exposed to his opposition. Indeed I do not think it would be easy 
for him, with his candour and humanity, after the clear, powerful 
and able manner in which this part of the case was stated by my 
hon. and learned Friend, to oppose that Clause. We come then tc 
the second Clause, and here lies the whole stress of the matter. 
The second Clause is one that rests upon this principle, that pre- 
scription as a general rule ought to confirm the title of those in 
possession, — that there ought to be a term of limitation, after 
which a title that might have originated wrongfully cannot right- 
fully be set aside. Certainly I never could have imagined that in 
an assembly of reasonable, civilized, and educated men, it would be 
necessary to offer a word in defence of prescription as a general 
principle, if I had not been painfully instigated to it by that body 
of sages lately assembled in- conclave at Exeter-hall. I should 
have thought it as much a waste of time of the House, as to make 
a speech against the impropriety of burning witches, or of trying 
a right by wager of battle, or of testing the guilt or innocence of 
a culprit by making him walk over burning ploughshares. They 
did me the honour to communicate to me the burden of their 
opinions, that this principle of prescription, as declared by the pre- 
sent Bill, is untenable and unworthy of the British Legislature. 
They said that this principle of legislation, adopted for the purpose 
of terminating and quieting people in possession, is a principle 
untenable, and one that is unworthy of a British Legislature; and 
they added, "the present Government is inconsistent in bringing 
forward a Bill containing this principle of limitation, because that 
Government has created two new Vice Chancellors." If these 
Gentlemen are bad logicians, they are just as bad j mists. I stand 
here as the advocate of prescription, and I do not forget the pre- 
scriptive right which the gentlemen who assemble on the platform 
of Exeter-hall have of talking nonsense. It is a prescriptive right 
which may be abused, and in the present case it is my opinion thai 
it has been abused. At all events this must be evident, that if 



P3 UlSSBKTEttS* CI1APEL BILL. 

these gentlemen are in the right, all the master philosophers, all th* 
jurists, and all the bodies of laws by which men arc and have been 
governed throughout the civilized world, are fundamentally in the 
wrong. How, it may be asked, can any civilized society exist 
without the aid of that untenable principle which is said to be 
unworthy of a British Legislature ? It is in every known part of 
the world ; in every civilized age ; it was familiar to the old tribu 
nals of Athens ; it formed part of the Roman jurisprudence 
and was spread with the imperial power over the whole of 
Europe. It was recognised after the French Revolution, and 
when the code Napoleon was formed, that very principle of pre- 
scription was not forgotten. We find it both in the East and the 
West ; it is recognised by tribunals beyond the Mississippi, and in 
countries that had never heard of Justinian, and had no transla- 
tion of the Pandects. In all places we find it acknowledged as a 
sacred principle of legislation. We have it amongst the Hindoos 
as well as amongst the Mexicans and Peruvians ; in our own 
country we find it coeval with the beginning of our laws. It is 
bound in the first of our Statutes — it is close upon our great first 
Forest Charter — it is consecrated by successive Acts of Parliament 
— it is introduced into the Statute of Merton — it is found in the 
Statute of Westminster — and the principle only becomes more 
stringent as it is carried out by a succession of great legislators and 
statesmen down to our own time. You have been convinced by 
experience of the advantage of this principle, and you have found 
that when particular points have been left unguarded by it, 
oppression has been the result, and legislation has been called in 
to remedy the evil. Sir George Saville brought in a law, barring 
the claims of the Crown ; Lord Tenterdcn brought in a Bill, 
barring the perpetual claims of the Church. Go where you will, 
you will see it in the civil legislation of every country. You will 
find in our body of laws a perfect agreement as to this principle — 
vou will find it m our first Great Cbirter— you will find it enforced 



DISSENTERS* CHAPEL titLt. 2(M* 

by the Imperial and Greek Jurists — you will find it adopted fty 
the great men that Buonaparte brought about him — ay, and you 
will even find it amongst the Pandects of the Benares. How, utiles* 
there has been some universal sense of the great good it contained, 
and of the great evil of wanting it, could men have been brought 
by distinct paths to the same conclusion ? Is it difficult to see 
how men have arrived at this conclusion ? Is it not clear that the 
principle of prescription is essential to the institution of property 
itself, and that if you take it away, it is not some or a few evils 
that must follow, but general confusion ? Only imagine if vou 
were to do away with this principle in Exeter-hall — 1 beg pardon, 
I meant Westminster Hall — only imagine if you were to strike 
out this principle — if you were to intimate that it was unworthy 
of the British Legislature — what confusion would be the conse- 
quence ? Only imagine any man amongst us being liable to be 
sued upon a bill of exchange accepted by his grandfather in the 
year 17G0 — only imagine, if a man had an estate and manor 
coming to him from his father, and grandfather, and great grand- 
father, and yet liable to be turned out of possession, because a will 
or a deed in the reign of Charles I. was found in some old chest 
or cranny. Wiiy, if this could be done, should we not all cry 
out, that it would be better to live under the rule of a Turkish 
pacha than under such an intolerable evil ? Is it not plain that 
the enforcement of obsolete riohts would in effect be committing 
absolute wrong; that this extreme rigour of law, without a limita- 
tion of time, would be a system of great and methodised robbery? 
If this then be the general principle, and if it is proper to establish 
a certain limit to rights, then I wish to ask how it is that it is not 
to apply to the case before us ? I have read the petitions that 
have been presented here — I have heard the arguments of my 
hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford ; and I 
should have heard, if he had any to state, the arguments of the 
hon. Member for Kent. Mv hon. Friend did his best to take this 



case out of the general principle ; but instead of that his argu- 
ments were against the principle of limitation itself. He has said 
that here the measure arises out of wrongful possession. Why 
all the statutes of limitation do. My hon. Friend says, this is ex 
post facto. What act of limitation is not so, to a certain extent ? 
Let him go to the Statute of Merton, passed in 1235 ; to the Sta- 
tute of Westminster, in 1275; to that of James I., in 1623; tc 
that introduced by Sir George Saville, or that by Lord Tenterden, 
and lie will find that every one of them had a retrospective effect. 
He will find that every one of those Acts looked to the past as 
well as to the future. Reasoning and reflecting men approved of 
this; every one approved of it; and until religious bigotry was 
aided by chicane, there was no one to find fault with it ; and nc 
one to differ from the general opinion. There is not a single Act 
for healing existing defects in titles that does not take awav a 
right which, if such a law had not passed, would have existed. 
The 2nd Clause of this Bill does not differ from any statute of 
limitation that has ever been passed. The opponents of the mea- 
sure said, " It is a reason against the Bill that you make the 
length of time during which these parties have been doing wrong 
a justification for them. It is an aggravation of the case, for yon 
suffer this length of time to be a reason for consecrating the 
wrong." This is the case wherever the principle of limitation 
exists. It is a greater wrong to my tailor if I refuse to pay him 
for 20 years, than if I refuse to pay him for 12 months; but the 
law says that at the end of 12 months I must pay him, whilst at 
the end of 20 years I am not bound to pay him. It is the same 
with an estate. It is a greater evil for a gentleman and his family 
to be deprived of his property for five generations than for five days ; 
and yet, after an ejectment of five days you may be restored to 
your estate, but at the end of five generations the right is barred. 
Every argument used against us on this occasion, is an argument 
against the whole principle of limitation ; and if there be t, case in 



dissenters' chapel rill. 211 

which limitation ought to be applied, this, I would say, is the verj 
case : suppose a person is turned out of an estate after holding fol 
sixty or ninety years (about the time which the Members of the 
Unitarians are &aid to have held their chapels), then, bad as that 
might be, still all you would do, would be to take away from the 
individual that to which he had a defective title. lie could lose 
nothing that was his own. But the property of the Unitarians is 
so mixed up with the acquired property under trustees, that it is 
impossible to take away the mere original soil, without also taking 
aw, -iv something of great value, which is unquestionably their 
own. It is not a case of ordinary property, in which a man gets 
rents and profits, and expends nothing and loses nothing beyond 
the original value of the land. And yet limitation in this case is 
petitioned against as a grievance. Have Gentlemen bestowed 
their attention upon the petitions presented against this Bill, they are 
tilled with vague declarations and theological invective; whilst the 
petitions in favour of the Bill contain statements of great practical 
grievances. Take for instance the case of Cirencester. The meet- 
iiig-hou.->e was built in 1*730, and it was in proof that in 1742 there 
were preaehed there Unitarian doctrines. That was twelve years 
after the chapel had been founded, and when a great many of the 
original subscribers must have been living. Many, too, of the 
present congregation were the lineal descendants of the original 
subscribers, and large sums had been continually laid out by them 
in embellishing the chapel. Now doubts were raised as to their 
title. Then there was Norwich, where, in 1688, a great dissenting 
meeting house was established. At an early period anti-Trinita- 
rian doctrines were professed, and so it went gradually on, until at 
length, in 1754, it was certain that both the preacher and the 
congregation were Arianists. At the present moment there is ail 
round the meeting-house a burial-ground, in which there are the 
gravestones of Unitarians. A library is attached to the school- 
house. All these expenses have been incurred, and at thin 



212 DISSENTERS CHAPEL BILL. 

moment the hands of the congregation are tied down, and they 
aare not build nor repair until they know whether their title be 
S^ood. Such is the common, the ordinary history of these congre- 
gations. Go to Manchester, go to — I do not know that I have 
cited the best cases for my argument — but go to Manchester 
where I am certain Unitarianism has been preached for seventy 
years — that large sums have been laid out upon the chapel, and 
that it is, moreover, the place where Priestley himself once taught 
Or take Leeds — I am assured that 4,000/. has been subscribed for 
repairs to the principal Unitarian chapel there — that it is lying idle. 
because they dare not repair a single pew while this matter is 
pending. Go to other places — go to Maidstone — every where 
vou will find the same story — there 700/. had been subscribed 
within a short period. At Exeter Unitarianism has been preached 
tor eighty years, and 2,000/. has been expended upon the chapel. 
At Coventry, Bath, everywhere — I repeat, it is the same. Now, 
are these chapels places of which a British Legislature will consent 
to rob their possessors ? I say " rob" — I can use no other, nc 
lighter word. How would you feel were such a proposition made 
as to other property ? Would it be borne ? And what arc those 
who oppose this Bill to get in comparison to what those who are 
mjuriously affected by it are to lose ? What feelings have these 
latter associated with Priestley's pulpit — with Dr. Lardner's 
pulpit? What feelings have they connected with the places 
wherein Unitarian doctrines have so long been taught, and around 
which are the gravestones which pious love has placed over th 
remains of dearly prized sisters, wives, fathers, brothers — that 
these associations are to be so rudely disregarded, and structures 
wrenched from those to whom they are so valuable ? To those 
who seek to obtain possession of them, they are of no value beyond 
that which belongs to any place in which they can get a roof over 
their heads. If we throw out this Bill we rob one party of that 
w^ich that party considers to be invaluable, to bestow it upon. 



DtSSENTEKS* CHAPEL BILL. 2lS 

another stronger party, who will only value it as a trophy of vic- 
tory won, and as an evidence of the humiliation and mortificatioc 
of those from which it has been wrested. An imputation has been 
thrown out — not, I think, here, but it has been thrown out ii: 
many other places — I say an imputation of fraud has been applied 
to the Unitarian congregations holding the chapels now in dis- 
pute. It has been said that they quite well knew the meaning of 
the original founder — that they knew that his views were Trinita- 
rian ; that nevertheless they had not acted up to those views, and 
that therefore they were guilty of fraudulent misapplication of 
funds, and fraudulent misapplication of lauds and buildings. 
And further, Sir, it has been said by a great authority upon 
such matters, that they must have been, necessarily, down to 
a comparatively recent period, either Trinitarians or counter- 
feit Trinitarians. Sir, it has been said that until 1779, everv 
Dissenting teacher was under the necessity of subscribing to 
the Articles of the Church of England, and that if he was an 
honest man he could not have subscribed to them, and have been 
also an Unitarian. Therefore the inference is clear, that persons 
who taught in meeting-houses down to 1779 were either Trinita- 
rians or rogues. Now, they were neither the one nor the other, 
and the eminent person who stated the contrary, intimately 
acquainted as he must be with the history of that Church to which 
he is an ornament, and who is, or ought to be, equally familiar 
with the annals of nonconformity, must know that from a very 
early period, the practice of compelling Dissenting Ministers to 
sign the Articles of the Church of England was not persisted in. 
There were many eminent Dissenting ministers of early days who 
never signed them. Dr. Calamy resisted, and was not molested ; 
and if it was so at an early period of the history of nonconfor- 
mity, when penal laws were strictest — when, as the vulgar proverb 
has it, it might have been expected that new brooms would have 
swept clean — is it not to be supposed that, at a later period, theii 



2i4 DISSENTERS* CHAPEL BILL. 

operations would have become still more lax? But the truth of 
the matter is this. As early as 1711, when the Whigs, by mean 5 , 
of their coalition with Lord Nottingham, managed to get tli€ 
Occasional Conformity Bill through the House of Lords, they 
inserted, by way of a favour to the Dissenters, a clause which very 
much took away the stringency of the obligation to subscribe tc 
the Articles of the Church. This clause provided, that if a person 
informed against a Dissenting teacher for not haying signed th 
Articles, the latter could, at any stage of the consequent judi- 
cial proceedings pending the judgment, defeat the information by 
signing the articles, a proceeding which, it was also enacted, 
should throw the whole burthen of the costs upon the shoulders 
of the informer. The House may conceive that very few informa- 
tions were likely to be laid under such conditions. The truth is 
that in 1*773, it was stated both in Parliament and in papers put 
forth by the Dissenting body at that period, that the majority of 
Dissenting preachers then teaching had never subscribed the Arti- 
cles. Therefore, I maintain that any argument grounded upon 
the supposed insincerity of the Unitarians falls valueless to the 
ground. As the case now stands, then, can it be necessary to 
prove how easily, how insensibly, how naturally, these congrega- 
tions having — as was, indeed, the very principle of the early Pres- 
byterians — no confession of faith, no precise form of worship inserted 
in their trust deeds to fix the actual doctrines — no subscription to 
any such document, being in fact the very bond which held them 
together — what can be more conceivable, more probable, than that 
they gradually should have gone on hardly knowing that the doc- 
trine preached one Sunday was not the same as that delivered the 
last; that they should have gradually passed from one set of 
opinions to another ? I know that this statement has been treated 
with derision. I see that my right hon. Friend near me (Mr. Fox 
Maule) does not assent to it. Will he allow me to refer him tc 
an instance with which he cannot but be well acquainted — T mean 



that of the first Scotch secession ? He will not surely hold that 
the doctrines taught and believed by the first Scotch secessionists 
are the same in all respects as those professed by that body now 
I have talked with many eminent and good and learned men 
belonging to that persuasion, and they have all admitted that 
upon points which were considered essential and fundamental by 
the original secessionists, their descendants have widely differed 
from them. Take for one point, the connection between Church 
and State. The first generation of seceders held that such connec- 
tion was proper, and sound, and desirable. They subscribed the 
Solemn League and Covenant, and afterwards, when Whitfield 
went to Scotland, although they agreed with him in his Calvi- 
nistic opinions, and admired — as everybody ought still to admire — 
his talents and his eloquence, yet they would hold no communion 
with him, because he held and taught that connection with the 
State was sinful. But how do matters stand now ? Are not the 
descendants of those very men crying out the loudest for the 
voluntary system, and contending the most earnestly for the prin- 
ciple that the Church should not be interfered with by the State ? 
Here is an instance of gradual change in opinion, and because of 
that change will you brand a great body of good men with such gross 
epithets as have been applied to a similar change of opinion among 
another body of Christians ? True, my right lion. Friend may say 
and think that such a matter as the connection of Church and State 
is of less importance than the doctrine of the Trinity ; but, Sir, I very 
much doubt whether, if lie had lived in the times of the original 
seceders, he would have found many of them to agree with him. In 
their opinion, the question of the connection of Church and State 
was a vital question. Again, the Wesleyan Methodists are very 
eager in their opposition to the Bill. Sir, is there nothing, I ask, 
in their history to make them uneasy upon such a point ? I 
think I can refer to some matters well calculated to afford grounds 
Sot very bitter recrimination. What were the doctrines of that 



216 * dissenters' chapel bill. 

great and good man, the founder of their sect, upon the subjec* 
of the lay administration of the Sacrament? lie told his congre- 
gation, when they wished for it, that it was a sin which he could 
never tolerate — which should never be committed with his con- 
sent — and in effect, I believe it was never performed during his 
lifetime. After his death, however, the feeling in favour of the 
lay administration of the Sacrament became very strong and very 
general ; a Conference was applied for, was constituted, and after 
some discussion, it was determined that the request should be 
granted. What is the consequence ? Why every building, every 
chapel, every plot of ground belonging to the Wesleyans is, Sun- 
day after Sunday, applied or misapplied to the performance of 
rites which the founder of the sect pronounced to be a sin and 
a heresy. But now, forsooth, these persons cry out loudly that it 
is a fraud, downright fraud, when the opinions of congregations 
change with the lapse of time, and are modified by the progress 
of events, that they should be permitted to retain their original 
endowments. If we refuse to pass this Bill, the quantity of litiga- 
tion which will arise you can hardly dream of. I own that, as I 
said before, it is painful for me to see the manner in which this 
Bill has been opposed, and the quarter from which much of that 
opposition proceeds. That of the Church is mild in comparison 
with that of other religious bodies, and yet th„ opposition of the 
Church party is certainly more excusable than the opposition of 
Dissenting bodies. Nothing is more natural than that the power 
of dominion, the habit of exercising authority, and that of treating 
religious bodies out of the Church as inferior to its members — - 
nothing is more natural than that all tins should produce great and 
grave faults, In the constitution of human nature it is hardly 
possible but that the high Chinch party, strong in their great 
endowments^ in their power of rffttotlug $mt& in Parliament, in 
the imiuence and effect of their old Universities, and accustomed, 
m I mid before, to look with some^a! of digdniii on other sect* 



DISSENTERS' CHAPEL BILL. 21" 

—it is hardly possible, but at all events it is not astonishing, tha* 
such a party should set itself up against the principle of religious 
liberty ; not that I approve of that, but it is almost what I expect. 
But, Sir, 1 am astonished that persons who have been over and 
over again compelled to invoke the principles of civil and religious 
liberty in their own behalf, should now cry out against this appli- 
cation of them. Sir, I have seen this conduct with astonishment, 
not unmingled with harsher feelings; but that which increases the 
astonishment, which deepens those feelings is, to bear from them 
this loud outcry of opposition at a moment when they themselves 
in a ^a/allel case are imploring the interposition and protection of 
Parliament, and while they are demanding an ex yost facto law for 
themselves, are opposing its application in the case of others. Sir, 
I allude to the question of Irish Presbyterian marriages. See how 
parallel the cases are : the Presbyterians have been marrying accord- 
ing to their own forms and rites for many years — so have the Uni- 
tarians been occupying property. In neither one case nor the 
other was any question raised for many years upon the subject — - 
nothing occurred calculated to excite doubt or suspicion in the 
minds of the most honest or the most scrupulous person. Well 
then, about the same time arose both questions, and about the 
same time were they both decided. The Courts of Law, deeply 
feeling the responsibility and the necessity under which they lay 
of administering the law according to the letter of the law, decided 
that neither in the case of the celebration of Presbyterian mar- 
riages, nor in that of the possession of Unitarian chapels, could 
prescription avail against the letter of the law. Up got, immedi- 
ately, the orthodox Trinitarian Dissenters ; they first accused the 
lawyers who had pronounced this decision, and now they accuse 
the legislators who wish to relieve tiot only them, but other Dis- 
senters from its effects. It was but the other day that I observed 
the oration of an eminent person amongst the Irish Presbyterians 
indignantly demanding whether, in the ease of these marriages, old 
TOL. " 10 



218 dissenters' chapel bill. 

and forgotten laws were to be dug up and applied to times and tc 
circumstances so different from those in which they were enacted', 
and yet in the course of a very few hours I find him urging tlit 
digging up and application of these very old and forgotten laws tc 
another bodv of Ins fellow Christians. I should like to know how 
Presbyterian Dissenters would like the high Church party of Eng- 
land to take up the same tone towards them which they have 
thought proper to adopt in reference to their Unitarian brethren. 
Suppose the high Church party were to say, "We also have law 
upon our side. If the Unitarians are heretics, you are schismatic: : 
and we refuse to give you the relief which you decline extend'iig 
to ihem. You shall have no ex post facto law legalising the mar- 
riages celebrated by yourselves, if you refuse an ex post facto law 
to them legalising their possession of the chapels supported by 
themselves. If they are turned out, your marriages shall be inva- 
lid." How would you Presbyterian orthodox Dissenters like to be 
treated as you treat others? Great and just as is the importance 
which you attach to the point of doctrine which separates you 
from Unitarians, by your conduct you seem to have forgotten that 
it is not the whole sum and substance of Christianity, but that 
there is a text about " doing unto others as you would that others 
should do unto you." There is, however, certainly one distinction 
between the two cases. The Trinitarian Dissenters are a far more 
opulent and powerful body, and have means more likely to be 
applied and more easily applied to influence constituencies and 
affect seats than have the Unitarians. We know that that sect is 
small — that it is unpopular — that it can produce little effect upon 
elections ; perhaps I may go so far as to say that it would pro- 
bably be the best wav to win public favour altogether to repudiate 
them and their doctrines; and therefore, if such be the case— 
if there be any person of an arbitrary nature and intolerant turn 
of mind, who wishes to enjoy the pleasure of persecution with per- 
fect personal impunity — then I say that he vm have no xuOra 



frtHStiN'TEKs' CftAPfcL BILL. 2111 

excellent opportunities for the indulgence t»f his propensities than 
the present. For myself, Sir, I have taken up the doctrines of 
civil and religious liberty, not. because they are popular, but 
because they are just; and the time may come, : nd it may come 
soon, when some of those who are now crying out against this 
Bill may be compelled to appeal to the principles on which i 
rests; and if that shall be the case, then. Sir, I will attempt to pre 
vent others from oppressing them, as I now seek to keep them 
from lording it over others. At present I contend against theii 
intolerance in the same spirit as I may hereafter have to battle foi 
their rights. 



220 



POST-OFFICE— OPENING LETTERS * 

june 24, 1844. 

JIk could assure the right hon. Gentleman (Sir J. Graham) that it 
was his intention to look at the Motion then before the House as 
anything but a party question, and to discuss it without th« 
admixture of anything like party views ; but he must at the same 
time observe, that the topics here presented were such as he could 
wish might be avoided ; for, he must say, that the language and the 
manner of the right hon. Gentleman were not those of a man who 
was conscious of the very peculiar position in which he was placed. 
Even if the right hon. Baronet had the power, and said that the 
power was necessary, and that in these cases it had been pro- 
perly used, still it was a power that it was most odious to use, 
and for which strong reasons ought to be given ; for, even if the 
power were necessary, still it might be obvious that it was one 
singularly abhorrent to the genius of the English people. The 
power here exercised was one which the House had, in cases of 
necessity, entrusted to the Government; but then it was a power 
that the House was bound to watch how it was exercised, and in 
which they ought to know precisely what had been done; the 
nature of the warrant; how often such warrants had been issued, 
in which, too, they ought to be told the course of proceedings 
that had been adopted. This was a case, beyond all others, in 
which the Minister ought not to think he had done enough 
to satisfy a House of Commons, by merely saying that lie had 
the power; he had exercised it; he was responsible for the exercise 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. lxxv. p 1274-1281. 



t'OSt OFFICE OPENING LETTERS. 221 

of such power; but he would give them no account of the mannei 
in which he had exercised it. That was to encourage the suspi- 
cion that the power had been abused ; because he could not see, 
and this he said without casting the slightest imputation on the 
right lion. Baronet, lie could not see how so considerable a power 
as this entrusted to a Minister and exercised by him, could be 
used, without the Minister deeming it to be proper to do something 
more than this, or only thinking that it would be sufficient for him 
to say, that " he' was responsible." Now, he thought, that where 
there was such a power exercised, the question was not to be so 
treated. They had then the fact as to such a power existing, and 
then came a very serious question upon this most important 
Motion of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Finsbury, calling 
upon them, amongst other things, to appoint a Committee to 
inquire into the present law giving that power. Now, he begged 
to say, that for the present state of the law neither party of that 
House was answerable, Both parties had received it from their 
ancestors — both parties, when in power, had used it — and he did 
not impute to either the having used it dishonestly or oppressively ; 
but now, he said, since their attention had been called to this 
power, it could not, without very great modifications, be permitted 
to last. He began by saying that he defied any person to show 
him the difference between a letter of his being taken from him 
when in the Post Office, and a letter taken from him out of his 
desk. He defied them to show how the public safety could justify 
any more a letter of his being taken out of the post-bag than it 
could justify its being taken out of his desk. Why was the letter 
put into the post-bag, except for the purpose of being transmitted 
to the person for whom it was destined ? It was given to the 
Post Office, and for the purposes of revenue a monopoly was given 
to the Post Office. The sole purpose was the safe transmission 
of the letter: but the turning the Post Office into an engine of the 
police, was, he said, utterly abhorrent to the public feeling. Let 



222 TOST OFFICE OPENING LrttTiTtg. 

tliem only consiier, if there was a single reason for examining let- 
ters to or from him in the Post Office, which was not good and 
valid for examining letters that he had in his desk ; let them taka 
it that there w T as a treasonable plot — the most treasonable eve* 
thought of : the letters might contain treason. Then the treason 
could be as well discovered in the letter in his pocket, as the letter 
when transmitted. As to the inconvenience, it was the sam« 
to him in both cases, and the plea for both was the public neces 
sity. It was the same whether a person's correspondence wai 
examined before it reached him, as after it had reached him 
There was no difference as to the injury done to him. If the 
public danger was the same, the inconvenience to the individual 
was the same. Then, why make the distinction ? He knew that 
in cases of suspected crime the letters could be examined and pro- 
duced in a court of justice, whether taken in transit or in the per- 
son's pocket. But then, if a letter were delivered and they took 
it wrongfully, they would be liable to an action for damages ; and 
if they used violence, they would be severely punished. Thus, in 
the case of Mr. Wilkes, when his letters had been seized, and 
carried to Lord Halifax and the Under Secretary of State, he 
brought an action for those letters being wrongfully seized and 
without probable cause, and the result was, that he gained his 
action, and they were obliged to pay, by the verdict of a jury, 
1,000/. damages. That was what he called Ministerial responsi- 
bility. He wanted to know, when a letter got to Mr. Mazzini, if 
it was so sacred that it could not be touched, and yd before 
it came to him that it could be examined — that, upon the most 
vague supicion, fifty or a hundred letters could be thus stopped, 
and yet Mr. Mazzini never know whether they were examined or 
not. If it were possible to show him that the examination of 
a letter before it arrived was less injurious to the individual than 
the examination of it in the desk after it arrived, then he would 
give up the argument. Tt was idle to tell him that this was neces 



ir*OST OFFICE— OPENING LETTERS. 223 

sary ; fur worse things than this might be done, and sustained on 
the same plea. The fact was, the whole of the arguments in 
favour of the practice belonged to a class which the sense of the 
country had repudiated long ago. The question was not whether 
there were advantages in the spy system ; for that had been 
decided by their ancestors long ago. They were not now to deter 
mine whether they were to adopt the practice of employing spies, 
as was done by foreign governments. And what difference was there 
between their having spies upon words spoken, or words written \ 
In common fairness, he said it was no difference to him between 
a government breaking the seal of his letter in the Post Office, and 
the government employing a spy to poke his ear to the keyhole, 
and listen to the conversations he carried on. They might regard 
it necessary to the public safety to do this — to say that such 
a person was suspected, and that they had one of his servants feed 
to betray him. They might allege the same excuse for the police 
reading letters, as for listening to conversations; and there might 
be some advantage in this. There could be no doubt there might 
be an advantage in breaking open letters. No one denied it; but 
then was it titting that it should be done? In the same way, did 
any one doubt that there was an advantage in having police 
spies ? But then the country did not approve of them. The 
French had an advantage in having police spies. No one doubted 
that the spy system enabled them to bring to justice many who 
must otherwise have escaped. It was the same thing as to torture. 
There could be no doubt that as long as the Eng'ish law sanc- 
tioned the use of the torture a great many crimes were detected 
by it. It had, too, its advantages. — [Cries of "Oh, oh."] — Yes ; 
for the instant that Guy Fawkes was shown the rack, out came at 
once the entire story of the gunpowder plot. Even this torture, 
as well as the spy system, had these advantages, but then this 
country had determined long ago that such were pernicious, debas- 
ing, and dangerous modes of maintaining its institutions, Their 



224 POST OFi?xOE — OPENING LETTERS. 

ancestors declared that they would rather take the risk of grea 
crimes being committed, than owe their security to that syst<jir 
or those means, which would destroy the manly spirit of the people, 
on which far more reliance could be placed than all the schemes 
and decrees that could be invented for maintaining their greatness 
and independence as a nation. He did not, he again repeated it, 
mean to affirm that there had not been a fair intention in the 
Dower that had been exercised, but then he could not but see that 
the use of the power must have pernicious consequences. Suppose 
a Minister were to say, " Since I have been in office two letters 
have been opened at the Post Office. One was opened in refer- 
ence to questions of great importance regarding the public peace; 
another as it was supposed to be of a nature to throw great light 
upon the Exchequer Bill Case." Information of this kind, given 
by a Minister of the Crown, would have a great effect in quieting 
the minds of the public. But the right horn Gentleman having 
refused to give any information of the sort, forced on the convic- 
tion that this practice had been carried on to a very great extent 
by him, and under peculiar circumstances of concealment. He 
could never believe, that if the right hon. Baronet could have 
denied the charge that seals had been counterfeited and stamps 
replaced, in order to conceal the opening of the letter, he would 
not have been glad to have done so. The right hon. Baronet 
must know that unless protected in particular cases, the power 
exercised by the Government, and the practice of counterfeiting 
seals and replacing stamps, was a malum in •se, as well as an 
infraction of the Common Law of the land. The right hon. Baro- 
net admitted that being empowered by this Act of Parliament to 
do acts which were illegal at Common Law, he had authorised the 
opening letters at the Post Office, detaining some, and sending on 
others, taking care, however, to disguise the fact that they had 
been opened ; yet he would not satisfy the House and the country 
by teJing them how often he had done this ; nor the circumstaneea 



fOST OFFICE — OPENING LETTERS. 225 

under which he had done it. The right hon. Baronet would state 
neither the grounds upon which lie acted ; nor would he allow 
them to see the warrant which he had issued for the purpose. 
When he saw this, he (Mr. Macaulay) asked whether the House 
of Commons was not entitled, in a case like this, to take steps for 
a further inquiry ? He had put the case hypothetieallv : he could 
do nothing else ; he was enforced to do so, for the right hon. Gen- 
tleman would tell them nothing of the facts o( the case. Two 
years ago the manufacturing districts were in a very excited state 
there was a great deal of violence used, and attempts made to 
keep people from going to work. He could not forget that whilst 
these things were going on, an assertion was very generally put 
about that these troubles were got up in an underhand mannei 
by certain Gentlemen belonging to the Anti-Corn-Law League 
Now, this suspicion existing, what evidence was there to he 
obtained in support of it ; what proof so easy for a Government to 
obtain as by opening the letters of the Gentlemen, many of them 
Members of this House, known to be most prominentlv connected 
with the affairs of this society ? lie was not a member of the 
Anti-Corn Law League, he was not one of its representatives 
in this House. But, as a Member of Parliament, he wished to 
learn whether the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State 
might not, on some occasion like this, think it his duty as a prin- 
ciple to open all the letters of some thirty or forty most hon. Gen- 
tlemen, representatives of the people in this House, some having 
reference to important public a Hairs, others filled with the secrets 
of their respective families. Xow. as far as regarded Englishmen, 
the hardship of the case only went so far as this, that his secrets 
were >ead by public officials; but the case was a very different one 
in regard to the unhappy foreigner. They could not hang an 
Englishman, whatever his letters might contain, without the ordeal 
of a Judge and Jury ; but with respect to foreigners, he really diq 

wQiiileT that men who assumed to be so humane- as hon, Gentle 

10* 



226 POST OFFICE OPENING LETTERS. 

mer. opposite, should think so lightly of the consequences of thif 
sort <>f procedure. Some unhappy foreigner lias come to our free 
land, and relying upon the supposed good faith of the English 
Post Office, writes to his friends with greater freedom than he 
would otherwise have done, or than he would ever do abroad 
Then came the Secretary of some Foreign Embassy to the Secre- 
tary for the Home Department, applies for information as to the 
contents of the letters of certain parties, information which receiv- 
ing, he sends over to the native Government of the unhappy 
foreigner, who carefully lays it by. No evil consequences result to 
the unfortunate writer whilst he remains in this country ; but, at 
length, unconscious of what awaits him, he goes back to his native 
land — he actually walks into the lion's mouth, in a land where 
there is no jury to protect him, and upon evidence got up in this 
manner, he would be consigned, perhaps, to the inside of a dun- 
geon, for life, lie believed that the House would admit that he 
had never been one to indulge in this House in reflections upon 
the institutions or internal affairs of any foreign country whatever. 
On the contrary, he thought that as a rule the tone and manner 
of the House, as of the Government, ought to be marked with 
something of the respect and decorum of diplomatic procedure. 
But whilst they did not set themselves up as judges upon neigh- 
bouring governments, at least let them not set themselves up as 
their spies. This he must say, that if the continuance of this 
power in the hands of our Government would lead to such appli- 
cations from foreign powers, for the revelation of the contents of 
letters passing through our Post Office, he thought the only course 
would be to repeal this law altogether. For he thought it might 
sometimes be putting a Ministry into a very awkward position, if 
they should have to refuse to the Minister of a foreign friendly 
power information of this kind, which he said he required for the 
interests of his Government. He thought if this practice were 
found to exist, that it woild be better to enable a Minister to sa^ 



Pttft OFFICE — OPENING LETTERS. 2*21 

at once, " Parliament has not given us power to do what you ask 
us to do," than to run the risk of giving oft'ence by saying, " W< 
have the power, but we do not choose to exercise it in your case 
all that can be done in the matter must be done with such pub- 
icity as will give an injured, helpless man, an equal chance of 
redress and justice being done him." His feeling upon this sub- 
ject was so strong, that even if the Motion of the lion. Gentleman 
had gone much further than it did, if it had been for leave to bring 
in a Bill to take this power from the Secretary of State, he would 
have cordially voted for it; but, as it was, he would cordially give 
his vote for the Motion for a Committee to inquire whether this 
power had been properly exercised or not. 



*unr 2, 1844.* 

t would not now presume to address the House, were it not that 
I understand, during my absence, some allusion h<*s been made tc 
me by the light hon. Secretary of State for the Home Depart- 
ment. It is extremely difficult for a person who has not been 
present during a debate in this House to collect precisely what has 
been said during his absence ; and it is proportionally difficult for 
him to give an answer to any charges which have been made 
against him. But, if I rightly understand what I am told has 
been said by the right hon. Gentleman, the charges he has made 
against me may be classed under two heads. He has imputed to 
me, in the first place, a dereliction of my duty as a sworn servant 
of Her Majesty : and, secondly, he has accused me of making a 
persona] attack upou him, and of imputing to him some miscon- 
duct unprecedented in the administration of his predecessors. 
Now, as to the first and more important of these attacks, I denj 
that I have in any respect, by any observation I have addressed tc 
this House, violated my oath of duty as a Privy Councillor. 1 
deny that I have divulged any secret which came into my posses- 
sion in that capacity. I deny that in the character of a Privy 
Councillor I ever became acquainted with any circumstance what- 
ever relating to the practice of the Post Office. I deny that any 
paper I knew to be obtained by the opening or scraping of seals 
was ever, to the best of my knowledge, submitted to me in that 
capacity. I declare, also, that there is no Gentleman, on either 
side of this House, who is more completely ignorant than I am of 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. Ixxvi. p. 248-251. 



POST OFFICE— Oi'ENFNG UETTtittS. 229 

ail details of that Department of the Post Office to which frequent 
reference has been made during this discussion. Then, with re- 
spect to the second charge made against me by the right hon 
Gentleman, I deny, with equal confidence, the imputation that 1 
came down to this House to make a personal attack upon that 
right hon. Baronet. T certainly came down intending to express 
concisely, a very strong opinion as to the present state of the law 
and practice ; and I intended to have prefaced my observations by 
declaring that I made no imputation whatever upon the right hon 
Baronet beyond what must attach to him in common with all 
others who had been called upon to administer the same invidious 
law. If I departed from that line of conduct, it was because the 
right lion. Baronet himself forced me to such a course; because I 
considered that the line of conduct he adopted whs utterly incon- 
sistent with all notions of ministerial responsibility. I now say, 
that in my opinion, there is a wide distinction between the con- 
duct of the right hon. Gentleman (Sir J. Graham) and that of any 
persons who have preceded him in his present office ; for who, 
when called upon in the face of this House to state on what 
principle he had exercised the power we are now discussing, ever 
declined to do so before the rioht hon. Baronet? When Sir 
Robert Walpole was called upon in this House to make such a 
statement, he frankly avowed the principle on which he had acted. 
The noble Lord near me has made a distinct statement of the 
principle on which, during his administration, that department 
was directed. He distinctly declared that, in the exercise of this 
power, he acted solely with a view to the safety of this country ; 
and that he would have considered it a departure from the spirit 
of the law to examine the letters of foreigners, in consequence of 
applications from foreign Governments, founded upon apprehen- 
sions they might entertain. The right hon. Baronet opposite was 
repeatedly asked, "Will you state that this was the principle upon 
which you acted?" The right hon. Gentleman replied that he 



230 POST OFFICE — OPENING LETTERS. 

would not — that a sense of public duty, regard for the safety ot 
the State, induced him to refuse to declare the principle upor 
which he had acted. Was that consistent with the conduct of the 
right hon. Baronet to-night? Why, is not this Secret Committee, 
consisting of nine Members of this House, to tell us upon what 
principle this practice was carried on ? Is it not appointed ' : 
order that the House may ascertain on what general principle let 
ters have been opened ? There can be no doubt that the intention 
is, that this Secret Committee shall state to the House not parti- 
cular cases, but the general principles upon which the Post Office 
and other authorities have acted. To the appointment of that 
Committee the right hon. Baronet (Sir J. Graham) entertains no 
decided objection. Does he not conceive that the public safety is 
compromised by the appointment of such a Committee ? Let me 
ask the right hon. Baronet why he did not state to the House 
what he conceives will be the substance of the Report of that 
Committee? Why, if the Report of that Committee will com- 
promise the public safety, the right hon. Gentleman ought not to 
agree to its appointment ? If the public safety will not be com- 
promised by such Report, the right hon. Baronet ought not to 
have shielded himself under the pretence of " public safety," and 
have refused any answer to questions put to him on this subject. 
A mere declaration from him of the principles upon which he has 
acted would have prevented me from making any remarks as to 
his conduct ; I should merely have addressed myself to what I 
think the most important part of the subject — the state of the 
law. I shall be much surprised if the Report of this Committee 
should lead me to entertain an opinion different from that I have, 
hitherto expressed, namely, that the state of the law requires very 
great and extensive alteration. I will not detain the House further 
than to say that I heartily approve of the Motion of the right hon. 
Baronet opposite, and that I think, upon the whole, it is desirable 
£hat h* the first instance, at least, the proceedings of the Commfttof 



POST OFFICE — OPENING LETTERS. £31 

should be secret, I conceive it to be possible that some matters 
connected with the administration of foreign affairs might be dis* 
closed in the course of the examination, the publicity of which \v« 
might have reason to regret. I am not desirous that any secresy 
whatever should be preserved with respect to the internal arrange- 
ments of the Post Office; because, with regard to all matters 
purely internal, the people of this country are fully competent to 
judge what is for their own interest. Matters which it is not advi- 
sable to render public might, however, be disclosed in the course 
of an inquiry of this nature. I do not conceive that any Report this 
Committee mav present is likelv to induce me to change the 
opinion I now entertain — that the power possessed by the Secre- 
tary of State with regard to the opening of letters is one which 
produces no advantage at all commensurate with the evils and the 
feeling of insecurity which it occasions ; and that it is a power 
which, whether we censure the past exercise of it or not, we ought 
without delay to abolish. 



m\ 



THE SCGAR DUTIES.* 

feb. 26, 1845. 

Sir, if the question now at issue were merely a financial or D 
commercial question, I should be unwilling to offer myself to 
your notice: for I am well aware that there are, both on yoiu 
right and on your left hand, many gentlemen far more deeply 
versed in financial and commercial science than myself; and I 
should think that I discharged my duty better by listening to 
them than by assuming the office of a teacher. But, Sir, the 
question on which we are at issue with Her Majesty's Ministers is 
neither a financial nor a commercial question. I do not under- 
stand it to be disputed that, if we were to pronounce our decision 
with, reference merely to fiscal and mercantile considerations, we 
should at once adopt the Amendment of my noble Friend. 
Indeed the right hon. Gentleman the late President of the Board 
of Trade has distinctly admitted this. He says that the Ministers 
of the Crown call upon us to sacrifice great pecuniary advantages 
and commercial facilities, for the purpose of maintaining a moral 
principle. Indeed, neither in former debates nor in the debate of 
this night has any person ventured to deny that, both as respects 
the public purse and as respects the interests of trade, the course 
recommended by my noble Friend is preferable to the course 
recommended by the Government. The objections to my noble 
Friend's Amendment, then, are purely moral objections. We lie. 
it se*ms, under a moral obligation to make a distinction between 
the produce of free labour and the produce of slave labour. Now 

* Hun^nl, 3.] Series, vol Ixxvii n. 1288-1.^06. 



ItJOAR DUttE§. g§3 

t should be as unwilling to incur the imputation of being 
indifferent to the welfare of the African race as any lion. Membet 
opposite can be to incur the imputation of hypocrisy. I do, 
however, think that it is in my power to show strong reasons for 
believing that the moral obligation pleaded by the Ministers has 
uo existence. If there be no such moral obligation, then, as it is 
conceded on the other side that all fiscal and commercial 
arguments are on the side of my noble Friend, it follows that we 
ought to adopt his Amendment. The right lion. Gentleman the 
late President of the Board of Trade has said, that the Govern- 
ment does not pretend to act with perfect consistency as to this 
distinction between free labour and slave labour. It was, indeed, 
necessary that he should say this ; for the policy of the Govern- 
ment is obviously most inconsistent. Perfect consistency, I admit, 
we are not to expect in human affairs. But, surely, there is a 
decent consistency which ought to be observed ; and of this the 
right hon. Gentleman himself seems to be sensible ; for he asks 
how, if we admit sugar grown by Brazilian slaves, we can with 
decency continue to stop Brazilian vessels engaged in the Slave 
Trade. This argument, whatever be its value, proceeds on the 
very correct supposition that the test of sincerity in individuals, in 
parties, and in governments, is consistency. The right hon. 
Gentleman feels, as we must all feel, that it is impossible to give- 
credit for good faith to a man who on one occasion pleads a 
scruple of conscience as an excuse for not doing a particular tiling, 
and who on other occasions, where there is no essential difference 
of circumstances, does that very thing without any scruple at all. 
I do not wish to use such a word as hypocrits, or to impute that 
odious vice to any Gentleman on either side of the House. But 
whoever declares one moment that he feels himself bound by a 
certain moral rule, and the next moment, in a case strictly 
similar, acts in direct defiance of that rule, must submit to have, 
if not his honesty, yet at least his power of discriminating right 



SS4 sfcoAii b^ftti: 

from wrong very gravely questioned. Now, Sir, I deny tiu 
existence of the moral obligations alleged by the Government* 1 
deny that we are under any moral obligation to turn our fiscal 
code into a penal code, for the purpose of correcting vices in the 
institutions of independent states. I say that, if you suppose such 
a moral obligation to be in force, the supposition leads to 
consequences from which every one of us would recoil, to con- 
seauences which would throw the whole commercial and political 
system of the world into confusion. I say that, if such a morai 
obligation exists, our financial legislation is one mass of injustice 
and inhumanity. And I say more especially that, if such a 
moral obligation exists, then the right hon. Baronet's Budget is 
one mass of injustice and inhumanity. Observe, I am net 
disputing the paramount authority of moral obligation. 1 am 
not setting up pecuniary considerations against moral considera- 
tions. I know that it would be not only a wicked but a short- 
sighted policy, to aim at making a nation" like this great and 
prosperous by violating the laws of justice. To those laws, enjoin 
what they may, I am prepared to submit. But I will not palter 
with them, I will not cite them to-day in order to serve one turn, 
and quibble them away to-morrow in order to serve another. 1 
will not have two standards of right, one to be applied when I 
wish to protect a favourite interest at the public cost, and another 
to be applied when I wish to replenish the Exchequer, and to give 
an impulse to trade. I will not have two weights or two 
measures. I will not blow hot and cold, play fast and loose, 
strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Can the Government say 
as much ? Are Gentlemen opposite prepared to follow out theii 
own principle ? They need not look long for opportunities. The 
Statute Book swarms with enactments directly opposed to the rule 
which they profess to respect. I will take a single instance from 
our existing laws, and propound it to the Gentlemen opposite as a 
test, if I must not say of their sincerity, yet of their power oi 



SUGAR DUTIES. 23r, 

moral discrimination. Take the article of tobacco. Not onlv <lo 
ou admit the tobacco of the United States which is grown by 
slaves ; not only do you admit the tobacco of Cuba which is 
grown by slaves, and by slaves, as you tell us, recently imported 
from Africa ; but you actually interdict the free labourer of the 
United Kingdom from growing tobacco. You have long had on 
your Statute Book laws prohibiting the cultivation of tobacco in 
England, and authorising the- Government to destroy all tobacco 
plantations, except a few square yards, which are suffered to exist 
unmolested in botanical gardens, for purposes of science. These 
laws did not extend to Ireland. The free peasantry of Ireland 
began to grow tobacco. The cultivation spread fast. Down came 
your legislation upon it ; and now, if the Irish freeman dares to 
engage in competition with the slaves of Virginia and Ilavannah, 
you exchequer him ; you ruin h ; m ; you grub up his plantation. 
Here, then, we have a test by which we may try the consistency 
of the gentlemen opposite. I ask you, are you prepared, I do 
not say to exclude slave-grown tobacco, but to take away from 
slave-grown tobacco the monopoly which you now give to it, and 
to permit the free labourer of the United Kingdom to enter into 
competition on equal terms, on any terms, with the negro who 
works under the lash ? I am confident that the three right hon. 
Gentlemen opposite, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer, and the late President of the Hoard of 
Trade, will all with one voice answer " No." And why not ? — 
"Because," say they, "it will injure the Revenue. True it is," 
they will say, " that the tobacco imported from abroad is grown 
by slaves, and by slaves many of whom have been recently 
carried across the Atlantic, in defiance, not only of justice and 
humanity, but of law and treaty. True it is that the cultivators 
of the United Kingdom are freemen. But then on the imported 
tobacco we are able to raise at the Custom-house a duty of GOO 
per cent., sometimes indeed of 1,200 per cent. : and, if tobacco 



230 SUGAR DUTIES. 

were grown here, it would be difficult to get an excise duty o» 
even 100 per cent. We cannot submit to this loss of revenue 
and therefore we give a monopoly to the slaveholder, and make it 
penal in the freeman to invade that monopoly." You may be 
light : but in the name of common sense, be consistent. If this 
moral obligation of which you talk so much be one which may 
with propriety yield to fiscal considerations, let us have Brazilian 
sugars. If it be paramount to all "fiscal considerations, let us at 
least have British snuff and cigars. The present Ministers may 
indeed plead that they are not the authors of the laws which 
prohibit the cultivation of tobacco in Great Britain and Ireland. 
That is true. The present Government found those laws in 
existence : and no doubt there is good sense in the Conservative 
doctrine that many things which ought not to have been set up 
ought not, when they have been set up, to be hastily and rudely 
pulled down. But what will the right hon. Baronet urge in 
vindication of his own new Budget? He is not content with 
maintaining laws which he finds already existing in favour of pro- 
duce grown by slaves. Be introduces a crowd of new laws to the 
same effect. lie comes down to the House with a proposition for 
entirely taking away the duties on the importation of cotton. He 
glories in this scheme. He tells us that it is in strict accordance 
with the soundest principles of legislation. He tells us that it will 
be a blessing to the country. I agree with him, and I intend to 
vote with him. But how is all this cotton grown ? Is it not 
grown by slaves? Again I say, you may be rght; but, in the 
name of common sense, be consistent. ] s.-uv, with no small 
amusement, a few days ago, a paragraph by one of the right hon. 
Baronet's eulogists, which was to the following effect : — " Thus 
has this eminent statesman given to the English labourer a large 
supply of a most important raw material, and has manfully with- 
stood those ravenous Whigs who wished to inundate our country 
wjth sugar dyed in negro blood " With what, I should fife to 



SUGAR DUTIES. 231 

know, is the right hem. Baronet's cotton dyed ? Formerly, 
indeed, m attempt was made to distinguish between the cultiva- 
tion of cotton and the cultivation of sugar. The cultivation of 
sugar, it was said, was peculiarly fatal to the health and life of the 
slave. But that plea, whatever it may have been worth, must 
now be abandoned ; for the right hon. Baronet now proposes to 
reduce, to a very great extent, the duty on slave-grown sugar 
imported from the United States. Then a new distinction is set 
up. The United States, it is said, have slavery; but they have 
no slave trade. I deny that assertion. I say that the sugar and 
cotton of tlie United States are the fruits, not only of slavery, but 
of the siave trade. And I say further that, if thwe be on the 
surface of this earth a country which, before God and man, is 
more accountable than any other for the misery and degradation of 
the African race, that country is not Brazil, the produce of which 
the right hon. Baronet excludes, but the United States, the 
produce of which he proposes to admit on more favourable terms 
than ever. I have no pleasure in going into an argument of this 
nature. I do not conceive that it is the duty of a Member of the 
English Parliament to discuss abuses which exist in other societies. 
Such discussion seldom tends to produce any reform of such 
Anuses, and has a direct tendency to wound national pride, an*, to 
intlaine national animosities. I would willingly avoid thissubjeci, 
but the right hon. Baronet leaves me no choice. He turns this 
House into a Court of Judicature for the purpose of criticising 
and comparing the institutions of independent States. He tells us 
that one Tariff is to be made an instrument for rewarding the 
justice and humanity of some Foreign Governments, and for 
punishing the barbarity of others. He binds up the ('earesi 
interests of mv constituents with questions with which otherwise i 
should, as a Member of Parliament, have nothing to do. T woulc": 
gladly keep silence on such questions. But it cannot be. The 
tradesmen, and the professional men whom I represent say to me, 



228 SU^AR DUTIES. 

u Why arc we to be loaded, certainly for some years, probably foi 
ever, with a tax, admitted by those who impose it to be grievous, 
unequal, inquisitorial ? Why are we to be loaded in time of 
peace with burdens heretofore reserved for the exigencies of war V' 
The paper manufacture]-, the soap manufacturer, say, u Why, if 
the Income Tax is to becoutinued, are our important and suffering 
branches of industry to have no relief V And the answer is, 
" Because Brazil does not behave so well as the United States 
towards the negro race." Can I then avoid instituting a compari- 
son ? Am I not bound to bring to the test the truth of an asser- 
tion pregnant with consequences so momentous to those who have 
sent me hither? I must speak out; and if what I say gives 
offence and produces inconvenience, for that offence and for that 
inconvenience the Government is responsible. I affirm, then, that 
there exists in the United States a Slave Trade, not less odious or 
demoralising, nay, I do in my conscience believe, more odious 
and more demoralising than that which is carried on between 
Africa and Brazil. North Carolina and Virginia are to Louisiana 
and Alabama what Congo is to Rio Janeiro. The slave States of 
the Union are to be divided into two classes, the breeding States, 
where the human beasts of burden increase and multiply and 
become strong for labour, and the sugar and cotton States to 
which those beasts of burden arc sent to be worked to death. To 
what an extent the traffic in man is carried on we may learn by 
comparing the census of 1830 with the census of 1840. North 
Carolina and Virginia are, as I have said, great breeding States, 
During the ten years from 1830 to 1840 the slave population of 
North Carolina was almost stationary. The slave population of 
Virginia positively decreased. Yet, both in North Carolina and 
Virginia propagation was, during those ten years, going on fast, 
The number of birtns among the slaves in those States exceeded 
by hundreds of thousands the number of the deaths. What, then, 
became of the surplus ? Look to the returns from the Southern 



SC6AR DCTTtiS. ^fl 

States, to tlie States whose produce the right hon. Baronet, 
proposes to admit with reduced duty or with no duty at all, and 
you will see. You will find that the increase in the breeding 
States was barely sufficient to meet the demand of the consuming 
States. In Louisiana, for example, where we know that the negro 
population is worn down by cruel toil, and would not, if left to 
itself, keep up its numbers, there were, in 1830, 107,000 slaves; in 
1840, 170,000. In Alabama, the slave population during those 
ten years much more than doubled; it rose from 117,000 to 
253,000. In Mississippi it actually tripled. It rose from 05,000 
to 105,000. So much for the extent of this Slave Trade. And 
as to its nature, ask any Englishman who has ever travelled in 
the Southern States. Jobbers go about from plantation to plan- 
tation looking out for proprietors -who are not easy in their 
circumstances, and who are likely to sell cheap. A black boy is 
picked up here; a black girl there. The dearest ties of nature 
and of marriage are torn asunder as rudely as they were ever torn 
asunder by any slave captain on the coast of Guinea. A gang of 
three or four hundred negroes is made up ; and then these 
wretches, handcuffed, fettered, guarded by armed men, are driven 
southward, as you would drive (or rather as you would not drive) 
a herd of oxen to Smith field, that they may undergo the deadly 
labour of the sugar mill near the mouth of the Mississippi. A 
very few years of that labour in that climate suffice to send the 
stoutest African to his grave. But he can well be spared. 
While he is fast sinking into premature old age, negro boys in 
Virginia are growing up as fast into vigorous manhood to supply 
the void which cruelty is mating in Louisiana. God forbid that I 
should extenuate the horrors of the Slave Trade in any form ; but 
1 do think this its worst form. Bad enough it is that civilized men 
should sail to an uncivilized quarter of the world where slavery 
exists, should there buy wretched barbarians, and should carry 
them away to labour in a distant laud : bad enough ! But that a 



240 SfrGAH Bttftm 

civilized man, a baptized man, a man proud of being a citizen of 
a free state, a man frequenting a Christian church, should or-: ed 
slaves for exportation, and, if the whole horrible truth must )e 
told, should even beget slaves for exportation, should see children, 
sometimes his own children, gambolling around him from infancy, 
should watch their growth, should be familiar with their face?, 
and should then sell them for four or five hundred dollars a head, 
and send them to lead in a remote country a life which is a 
lingering death, a life about which the best thing that can be said 
is that it is sure to be short ; this does, I own, excite a horror 
exceeding even the horror excited by that Slave Trade which is 
the curse of the African coast. And mark : I am not speaking of 
any rare case, of any instance of eccentric depravity ; I am 
speaking of a trade as regular as the trade in pigs between Dublin 
and Liverpool, or as the trade in coals between the Tyne and the 
Thames. There is another point to which I must advert. I have 
no wish to apologise for slavery as it exists in Brazil ; but this 
say, that slavery, as it exists in Brazil, though a fearful evil 
seems to me a much less hopeless evil than slavery as it exists in 
the United States. In estimating the character of negro slavery, 
we must never forget one most important ingredient ; an ingre- 
dient which was wanting to slaverv as it was known to the 
Greeks and Romans ; an ingredient which was wanting to slaverv 
as it appeared in Europe during the middle ages, — I mean the 
antipathy of colour. Where this antipathy exists in a high 
degree, it is difficult to conceive how the white masters and the 
black labourers can ever be mingled together, as the lords and 
villeins in many parts of the Old World have been, in one free 
community. Now this antipathy notoriously is much stronger in 
the United States than in the Brazils. In the Brazils there are 
many hundred thousands of blacks and coloured freemen. These 
people are not excluded from honourable callings. You may find 
among them merchants, physicians, lawyers : many of them bear 



SUGAR DUTIES. 241 

fcrnas ; some have been admitted to holy orders. Whoever know9 
what dignity, what sanctity the Church of Rome ascribes to the 
person of a priest, will at once perceive the important consequences 
which follow from this last circumstance. It is by no means 
unusual to see a white penitent kneeling before the spiritual 
tribunal of a negro, confessing his sins to a negro, receiving 
absolution from a negro. It is by no means unusual to see a 
negro dispensing the Eucharist to a circle of whites. I need not 
tell the House what emotions of amazement and of rage such a 
spectacle would excite in Georgia or South Carolina. Fully 
admitting, therefore, as I do, that Brazilian slavery is a horrible 
evil, I yet must say, that if I were called upon to declare whether 
I think the chances of the African race on the whole better in 
Brazil or in the United States, I should at once answer in Brazil. 
I think it not improbable that in eighty or a hundred years the 
black population of Brazil may be free and happy. I see no 
reasonable prospect of such a change in the United States. The 
right hon. Gentleman the late President of the Board of Trade 
has said much about that system of maritime police by which we 
have attempted to sweep slave-trading vessels from the great high- 
way of nations. Now what has been the conduct of Brazil, and 
what has been the conduct of the United States, as respects that 
system of police ? Brazil has come into the system ; the United 
States have thrown every impediment in the way of the system. 
What opinion her Majesty's Ministers entertain respecting the 
Right of Search we know from a letter of my Lord Aberdeen 
which has, within a few days, been laid on our Table. I believe 
that I state correctly the sense of that letter when I say, that the 
noble Eari regards the Right of Search as an efficacious means, 
and as the only efficacious means, of preventing the maritime 
Slave Trade, lie expresses most serious doubts whether any 
substitute can be devised. I think that this check would be a 

most valuable one, if all nations vvon.d submit to it; and I 
YOL. II. 11 



£4$ etiGAft b\mt$. 

applaud the humanity which has induced successive British 
Administrations to exert themselves for the purpose of obtaining; 
the concurrence of Foreign Powers in so excellent a plan. Brazil 
consented to admit the Right of Search ; the United States 
refused, and by refusing deprived the Right of Search of half its 
value. Not content with refusing to admit the Right of Search, 
they even disputed the right of visit, a right which no impartial 
publicist in Europe will deny to be in strict conformity with 
the Law of Nations. Nor was this all : in every part of the 
Continent of Europe the diplomatic agents of the Cabinet of 
Washington toiled to induce other nations to imitate the example 
of the United States. You cannot have forgotten General Cass's 
letter. You cannot have forgotten the terms in which his Govern- 
ment communicated to him its approbation of his conduct. You 
know as well as I do that, if the United States had submitted to 
the Right of Search, there would have been no outcry against that 
right in France. Nor do I much blame the French. It is but 
natural that, when one maritime Power makes it a point of honour 
to refuse us this right, other maritime Powers should think that 
they cannot, without degradation, take a different course. It is 
but natural that a Frenchman, proud of his country, should ask 
why the tricolor is to be less respected than the stars and stripes. 
The right hon. Gentleman says, that if we assent to my noble 
Friend's Amendment, we shall no longer be able to maintain that 
Right of Search. Sir, he need not trouble himself about that 
right — it is already gone. We have agreed to negotiate on the 
subject with France : everbody knows how that negotiation 
will end. The French flag will be exempted from search ; Spain 
will instantly demand, if die has not already demanded, similar 
exemption ; and you may as well let her have it with a good 
grace, and without wrangling. For a Right of Search, from which 
the flags of France and America are exempted, is not worth a dis- 
pute. The only system, therefore, which in the opinion of Her 



SUGAR DUTIES. 243 

Majesty's Ministers has yet been found efficacious for the prevention 
of the maritime Slave Trade, is in fact abandoned. And who is 
answerable for this? The United States of America. The chief 
guilt even of the Slave Trade between Africa and Brazil lies, not 
with the Government of Brazil, but with that of the United 
States. And yet the right hon. Baronet proposes to punish 
Brazil for the Slave Trade, and in the same breath proposes to 
siiow favour to the United States, because the United States are 
pure from the crime of slave trading. I thank the right lion. 
Gentleman the late President of the Board of Trade for reminding 
me of Mr. Calhoun's letter. I could not have wished for a better 
illustration of my argument. Let anybody who has read that 
letter say what is the country which, if we take on ourselves to 
avenge the wrongs of Africa, ought to be the first ohiect of our 
indignation. The Government of the United States has placed 
itself on a bad eminence to which Brazil never aspired, and which 
Brazil, even if aspiring to it, never could attain. The Government 
of the United States has formally declared itself the patron, the 
champion of negro slavery all over the world — the evil genius, the 
Arimancs of the African race — and seems to take pride in this 
shameful and odious distinction. I well understand that an Ame- 
rican statesman might say, " Slavery is a horrible evii; but we were 
born to it; we see no way at present to rid ourselves of it: and 
we must endure it as best we may." Good and enlightened men 
may hold such language. : but such is not the language of the 
American Cabinet. That Cabinet is actuated by a propagandist 
spirit, and labours to spread servitude and barbarism with an 
ardour such as no other Government ever showed in the cause of 
freedom and civilisation. Nay more; the doctrine held at Wash- 
ington is that this holy cause sanctifies the most unholy means. 
These zealots of slavery think themselves justified in snatching 
away provinces on the right hand and on the left, in defiance of 
public faith and international law, from neighbouring countries 



244 SUGAR DUTIES. 

which have free institutions, and this avowedly for the purpose of 
diffusing over a wider space the greatest curse that afflicts human- 
ity. They put themselves at the head of the slave-driving interest 
throughout the world, just as Elizabeth put herself at the head of 
the Protestant interest; and, wherever their favourite institution 
is in danger, are ready to stand by it as Elizabeth stood by the 
Dutch. This, then, I hold to be demonstrated, that of all societies 
now existing, the Republic of the United States is by far the most 
culpable as respects slavery and the Slave Trade. Now then I 
come to the right hon. Baronet's Budget. He tells us, that he 
will not admit Brazilian sugar, because the Brazilian Government 
tolerates slavery and connives at the Slave Trade; and he tells us 
at the same time, that lie will admit the slave-grown cotton and 
the slave-grown sugar of the United States. I am utterly at a 
loss to understand how he can vindicate his consistency. He tells 
us that if we adopt my noble Friend's proposition, we shall give a 
stimulus to the Slave Trade between Africa and Brazil. Be it so. 
But is it not equally clear that if we adopt the right hon. Baronet's 
own propositions we shall give a stimulus to the Slave Trade be- 
tween Virginia and Louisiana? I have not the least doubt that 
as soon as the contents of his Budget are known on the other side 
of the Atlantic, the Slave Trade will become more active than it is 
at this moment; that the jobbers in human flesh and blood will 
be more busy than ever; that the droves of manacled negroes 
moving southward to their doom will be more numerous on every 
road. These will be the fruits of the right hon. Baronet's mea- 
sure. Yet he tells us, that his measure rests on sound principles, 
and will greatly benefit the country ; and he tells us truth. I 
mean to vote with him ; and I can perfectly, on my own princi- 
ples, reconcile to my conscience the vote which I shall give. 
How the right hon, Baronet can reconcile the course which he 
takes to his conscience, I am at a loss to conceive, and am wot a 
little curious to jvnow. No man is more capable than he of doing 



St'GAR DTTIKH. §\h 

justice to any cause which lie undertakes ; and it would be most 
presumptuous in me to anticipate the defence which he means to 
set up. But I hope that the House will suffer me, as one who 
fe<!s deeply on this subject, now to explain the reasons which 
convince me that I ought to vote for the right boo. Baronet's pro- 
positions respecting the produce of the United States. In explain- 
ing these reasons, I at the same time explain the reasons which 
induce me to vote with my noble Friend to-night. T sav, then, 
Sir, that I fully admit the paramount authority of mora! obliga- 
tions. But it is important that we should accurately understand 
the nature and extent of those obligations. We are clearly bound 
to wrong no man. Nay, more, we are bound to regard ail men 
with benevolence. But to every individual and to every society, 
Providence has assigned a sphere within which benevolence ought 
to be peculiarly active ; and if an individual or a society neglects 
what lies within that sphere in order to attend to what lies without 
the result is likely to be harm and not good. It is thus in private 
life. We should not be justified in injuring a stranger in order to 
benefit ourselves or those who are dearest to us. Every strangei 
is entitled, by the laws of humanity, to claim from us certain rea- 
sonable good offices. But it is not true that we are bound to exert 
ourselves to serve a mere stranger as we arc bound to exert our- 
selves to serve our own relations. A man would not be justified 
in subjecting his wife and children to disagreeable privations, in 
order to save even from utter ruin some foreigner whom he never 
saw. And if a man were so absurd and perverse as to starve his own 
family in order to relieve people with whom he had no acquaint- 
ance, there can be little doubt that his crazy charity would produce 
much more misery than happiness. It is the same with nations. No 
statesman ought to injure other countries in order to benefit his own 
country. No statesman ought to lose any fair opportunity of ren- 
dering to foreign nations such good offices as he can render 
without a breach of the duty which he owes to the society of 



f 246 sroAk nriiicM. 

which lie is a member. But, after all, out country is out country, 
and has the first claim on our attention. There is nothing, I con- 
ceive, of narrow-mindedness in this patriotism. I do not say that 
we ought to prefer the happiness of one particular society to 
the happiness of mankind ; but I say that, by exerting ourselves 
to promote the happiness of the society with which we arc most 
nearly <n*nectcd, and with which we are best acquainted, we shall 
do more to promote the happiness of mankind than by busying 
ourselves about matters which we do not fully understand, and 
cannot efficiently control. There are great evils connected with the 
factory system in this country. Some of these evils might, I am 
inclined to think, be removed or mitigated by legislation. On 
that point many of my Friends differ from me; but we all agree 
in thinking that it is the duty of a British Legislator to consider 
the subject attentively, and with a serious sense of responsibility. 
There are also great social evils in Russia. The peasants of that 
empire are in a state of servitude. The Sovereign of Russia is bound 
by the most solemn obligations to consider whether he can do any- 
thing to improve the condition of that large portion of his subjects. 
If we watch over our factory children, and he watches over his pea- 
sants, much good may be done. But would any good be done if 
the Emperor of Russia and the British Parliament were to inter- 
change functions ; if he were to take under his patronage tire 
weavers of Lancashire, if we were to take under our patronage the 
peasants of the Volga; if he were to say, "You shall send no 
cotton to Russia till you pass a Ten Hours' Bill ;" — if we were to 
say, " You shall send no hemp or tallow to England till you eman- 
cipate your serfs ?" On these principles, Sir, which seem to me to be 
the principles of plain common sense, lean, without resorting to any 
casuistical subtilties, vindicate to my own conscience, and, I hope, 
to my country, the whole course which I have pursued with 
respect to slavery. When 1 first came into Parliament, slavery 
still existed in the British dominions. I had, as it was natural that 



SUGAR DUTIE8. 247 

I should have, a strong feeling on the subject. I exerted myself, 
according to my station and to the measure of my abilities, on 
the side of the oppressed, I shrank from no personal sacrifice in 
that cause. I do not mention this as matter of boast. It was no 
more than mv dutv. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of 
State for the Home Department, knows that/in 1833, 1 disapproved 
of one part of the measure which Lord Grey's Government pro- 
posed on the subject of slavery. I was in office ; and office was 
then as important to me as it could be to any man. I put my 
resignation into the hands of Lord Spencer, and both spoke and 
voted against the Administration. To my surprise, Lord Grey and 
Lord Spencer refused to accept my resignation, and I remained in 
office; but during some days I considered myself as out of the 
service of the Crown. I at the same time heartily joined in laying 
a heavy burden on the country for the purpose of compensating 
the planters. I acted thus, because, being a British Legislator, I 
thought myself bound, at any cost to myself and to my consti- 
tuents, to remove a foul stain from the British laws, and to redress 
the wrongs endured by persons who, as British subjects, were 
placed under my guardianship. But my especial obligations in 
respect of negro slavery ceased when slavery itself ceased in th.it 
part of the world for the welfare of which I, as a Member of this 
House, was accountable. As for the blacks in the L^nitcd States, 
I feel for them, God knows ! But I am not their keeper. 1 do not 
stand in the same relation to the slaves of Louisiana and Alabama 
in which I formerly stood to the slaves of Demeraraand Jamaica. 
I am bound, on the other hand, by the most solemn obligations, to 
promote the interests of millions of my own countrymen, who 
are not indeed in a state so miserable and degraded as that of the 
American slaves, but who are toiling hard from sunrise to sunset 
in order to obtain a scanty subsistence ; who arc often scarcely 
able to procure the neces-aries of life ; and whose lot would be 
j&Jleviated if I could open new markets to them, and free them from 



248 SUGAR DUTIES. 

taxes which now press heavily on their industry. I see clearly 
that, by excluding the produce of slave labour from our ports, I 
should inflict great evil on my fellow-subjects and constituents. 
But the good which, by taking such a course, I should do to the 
negroes in the United States seems to me very problematical. That 
by admitting slave-grown cotton and slave-grown sugar we do, in 
some sense, encourage slavery and the Slave Trade, may be true. 
But I doubt whether, by turning our fiscal code into a penal code 
for restraining the crueltv of the American planters, we should 
not, on the whole, injure the negroes rather than benefit them. 
No independent nation will endure to be told by another nation 
<l We are more virtuous than you; we have sat in judgment on 
your institutions; we find them to be bad ; and, as a punishment 
for your offences, we condemn you to pay higher duties at our 
Custom-house than we demand from the rest of the world." Such 
language naturally excites the resentment of foreigners. lean 
make allowance for their susceptibility. For I myself sympathize 
with them. I know that Ireland has been misgoverned; and I 
have done, and purpose to do, my best to redress her grievances. 
But when I take up a New York journal and read there the rants 
of President Tyler's son, I feel so much disgusted by such insolent 
absurdity, that I am fora moment inclined to deny that Ireland 
has any reason whatever to complain. It seems to me that, if evei 
slavery is peaceably extinguished in the United States, that great 
and happy change must be brought about by the efforts of those 
enlightened and respectable American citizens who hate slavery as 
much as we hate it. Now I cannot, help fearing that, if the 
British Parliament were to proclaim itself the protector and avenger 
of the American slave, the pride of those excellent persons would 
take the alarm. It might become a point of national honour with 
them to stand by an institution which they have hitherto regarded 
as a national disgrace. We should thus confer no benefit on the 
negro; and we should at the same time inflict cruel suffering on 



SUGAR DUTIES. 249 

our own country men. On these grounds, Sir, I can, with a clear 
conscience, vote for the right hon. Baronet's propositions respecting 
the cotton and sugar of the United States. But on exactly the 
same grounds I can, with a clear conscience, vote for the Amend- 
ment of my noble Friend. And I confess that I shall be much 
surprised if the right hon. Baronet shall be able to point out any 
distinction between the cases. I have detained you too long, Sir; 
3 7 et there is one point to which I must refer ; I mean the refining. 
Was such a distinction ever heard of? Is there anything like it in 
all Pascal's Dialogues with the Old Jesuit? Not for the world are 
we to eat one ounce of Brazilian sugar. But we import the 
accursed thing; we bond it; we employ our skill and machinery 
to render it more alluring to the eye and to the palate ; we export 
it to Leghorn and Hamburgh ; we send it to all the coffee-houses 
of Italy and Germany ; we pocket a profit on all this; and then 
we put on a Pharisaical air, and thank God that we are not like 
those sinful Italians and Germans who have no scruple about 
swallowing slave-grown sugar. Surely this sophistry is worthy 
only of the worst class of false witnesses. "I perjure myself! 
Not for the world. I only kissed my thumb; I did not put my 
lips to the calfskin." I remember something very like the right 
lion. Baronet's morality in a Spanish novel which I read long ago. 
I beg pardon of the House for detaining them with such a trifle ; 
but the story is much to the purpose: — A wandering lad, a sort 
of Gil Bias, is taken into the service of a rich old silversmith, a 
most pious man, who is always telling his beads, who hears mass 
daily, and observes the feasts and fasts of the church with the 
utmost scrupulosity. The silversmith is always preaching honesty 
and piety. " Never," he constantly repeats to his young assistant, 
"never touch what is not your own; never take liberties with 
sacred things." Sacrilege, as uniting theft with profaneness, is the 
6in of which he lias the deepest horror. One day while he is 
lecturing after his usual fashion, an iJMooking fellow comes }ntQ 

11* 



250 SUGAR bUTIES. 

the shop with a sack under his arm. " Will you buy these ?" says 
the visitor, and produces from the sack some church plate and a 
rich silver crucifix. " Buy them ! erics the pious man. " No, 
nor touch them ; not for the world. I know where you got them 
Wretch that you are, have you no care for your soul ?" " Weh 
then," says the thief, " if you will not buy them, will you melt 
them clown for me ?" " Melt them down !" answers the silversmith, 
" that is quite another matter." He takes the chalices and the cru- 
cifix with a pair of tongs ; the silver thus in bond, is dropped into 
the crucible, melted, and delivered to the thief, who lays down five 
pistoles and decamps with his booty. The young servant stares 
at this strange scene. But the master very gravely resumes his 
lecture. "My son," he says, "take warning by that sacrilegious 
knave, and take example by me. Think what a load of guilt lies 
on his conscience. You will see him havged before long. But 
as to me, you saw that I would not touch the stolen property. I 
keep these tongs for such occasions. And thus I thrive in the 
fear of God, and manage to turn an honest penny." You talk of 
morality. What can be more immoral than to bring ridicule on 
the very name of morality, by drawing distinctions where there are 
no differences? Is it not enough that this dishonest casuistry has 
already poisoned our theology? Ts it not enough that a set ot 
quibbles has been devised, under cover of which a divine may 
hold the worst doctrines of the Church of Rome, and may hold 
with them the best benefice of the Church of England ? Let us at 
least keep the debates of this House free from the sophistry of 
Tract. No XC. And then the right lion. Gentleman the late Presi- 
dent of the Board of Trade wonders that other nations consider 
our abhorrence of slavery and the Slave Trade as sheer hypocrisy. 
Why, Sir, bow should it. be otherwise ? And if the imputation 
annoys us, whom have we to thank for it ? Numerous and male- 
volent as our detractors are, none of them was ever so absurd as to 
OJW'ge us with hypocrisy because we trU- sj^yewjrpvyn tobacco aucl 



Si*OAi< lifTiKs. 251 

slave-grown cotton, till tlic Government began to affect scruples 
about admitting Brazilian sugar. Ot* course, as soon as our Minis- 
ters ostentatiously announced to all the world that our fiscal system 
was framed on a new and sublime moral principle, every body 
began to inquire whether we consistently adhered to that principle. 
It required much less acuteness and much less malevolence than 
that of our neighbours to discover that this hatred of slave-grown 
produce was mere grimace. They sec that we not only take 
tobacco produced by means of slavery and the Slave Trade, but 
that we positively interdict freemen in this country from growing 
tobacco. They sec that we not only take cotton produced by 
means of slavery and of the Slave Trade, but that we are about 
to exempt this cotton from all duty. They see that we are at this 
moment reducing the duty on the slave-grown sugar of Louisiana. 
How can we expect them to believe that it is from a sense of justice 
and humanity that we lay a prohibitory duty on the sugar of Brazil? 
I care little for the abuse which any foreign press or any foreio-n 
tribune may throw on the Machiavelian policy of perfidious Albion. 
What gives me pain is, not that the charge of hypocrisy is made, 
but that I am unable to see how it is to be refuted. Yet one 
word more. The right lion. Gentleman the late President of the 
Board of Trade has quoted the opinions of two persons, highly 
distinguished by the exertions which they made for the abolition 
of slavery, my lamented friend Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton and Sir 
Stephen Lushington. It is most true that those eminent persons 
did approve of the principle laid down by the right hon. Baronet 
opposite in 1841. I think that they were in error; but in their 
error I am sure that they were sincere, and I firmly believe that 
they would have been consistent. They would have objected, no 
doubt, to my noble Friend's Amendment; but they would have 
objected equally to the right lion. Baronet's Budget. It was no. 
prudent, I think, in Gentlemen opposite to allude to those respect- 
able names. The mention of those names irresistibly carries the 



252 SUG.-.R DUTIES. 

mind back to the days of the great struggle for negro freedom. 
And it is but natural that we should ask, where, during that strug- 
gle, were those who now profess such loathing for slave-grcwn 
sugar ? The three persons who are chiefly responsible for the 
financial and commercial policy of the present Government I take 
to be the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Treasury, the 
right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the 
right hon. Gentleman the late President of the Board of Trade. 
Is there anything in the past conduct of any one of the three 
which can lead me to believe that his sensibility to the evils of 
slavery is greater than mine ? I am sure that the right hon. 
Baronet the First Lord of the Treasury would think that I was 
speaking ironically if I were to compliment him on his zeal for the 
liberty of the negro race. Never once, during the whole of the 
long and obstinate conflict which ended in the abolition of slavery 
in our Colonies, did he give one word, one sign of encouragement 
to those who suffered aud laboured for the good cause. The 
whole weight" of his great abilities and influence were in the other 
scale. I well remember that, so late as 1833, lie declared in this 
House that he could give his assent neither to the plan of imme- 
diate emancipation proposed by my noble Friend who now repre- 
sents Sunderland, nor to the plan of gradual emancipation proposed 
by Lord Grey's Government. I well remember that he said, "I 
shall claim no credit hereafter on account of this measure. All 
that I desire is to be absolved from the responsibility." As to the 
other two right hon. Gentlemen whom I have mentioned, they are 
West Indians, and their conduct was that of West Indians. I do 
not wish to give them pain, or to throw any disgraceful imputa- 
tion on them. Personally I regard them with feelings of good- 
will and respect. I do not question their sincerity ; but I know 
that the most honest men are but too prone to deceive themselves 
into the belief that the path towards which they are impelled by 
their own interests and passions is the path of duty. I am con 



SUGAR btlflES. £63 

Scious that this might be my own case; and I believe it to be 
theirs. As the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer has left the House, I will only say that, with respect to 
the question of slavery, he acted after the fashion of the class to 
which he belonged. But as the right hon. Gentleman the late 
President of the Board of Trade is in his place, he must allow me 
to bring to his recollection the part which he took in the debates 
of 1833. He then said, " You raise a great clamour about the 
cultivation of sugar. You say that it is a species of industry 
fatal to the health and life of the slave, I do not deny that there 
is some difference between the labour of a sugar plantation and 
the labour of a cotton plantation, or a coffee plantation. But the 
ditference is not so great as you think. In marshy soils the slaves 
who cultivate the sugar cane suffer severely. But in Barbadoes, 
where the air is good, they thrive and multiply." lie proceeded to 
say that, even at the worst, the labour of a sugar plantation was 
not more unhealthy than some kinds of labour in which the manu- 
facturers of England are employed, and which nobody thinks of 
prohibiting. lie particularly mentioned grinding. "See how 
grinding destroys the health, the sight, the life. Yet there is no 
outcry against grinding." lie went on to say, that the whole 
question ought to be left by Parliament to the West Indian Legis- 
latures. [Mr. Gladstone: Really I never said so. You are not 
quoting me at all correctly.] What, not about the sugar-cultiva- 
tion and the grinding? [Mr. Gladstone: That is correct; but I 
never recommended that the question should be left to the 'West 
Indian Legislatures.] 1 have quoted correctly. But since my 
right hon. Friend disclaims the sentiment imputed to him by the 
reporters, I shall say no more about it. 1 have no doubt that he 
is quite right, and that what he said was iniMiuderstood. What 
is undisputed, is amply sufficient for my purpose. I see that the 
party which now shows so much zeal against, slavery in foreign 
countries, is the same party which formerly countenanced slavery 



'254 stidAtt butrfes. 

in the British Colonics. I remember a time when they maintained 
that we were bound in justice to protect slave-grown sugar against 
the competition of free-grown sugar, and even of British free« 
grown sugar. I now hear tliem calling on us to protect free-grown 
sugar against the competition of slave-grown sugar. I remember 
a time when they extenuated as much as they could the evils of 
the sugar cultivation. I now hear them exaggerating those evils. 
But devious as their course has been, there is one clue by which I 
can easily track them through the whole maze. Inconstant in 
everything else, they are constant in demanding protection for the 
West Indian planter. While he employs slaves, they do their 
best to apologize for the evils of slavery. As soon as he is forced 
to employ freemen, they begin to cry up the blessings of freedom. 
They go round the whole compass, and yet to one point they 
steadfastly adhere: and that point is the interest of the West 
Indian proprietors. I have done, Sir; I thank the House most sin- 
cerely for the patience and indulgence with which. I have been 
heard. I hope that I have at least vindicated my own consistency. 
How Her Majesty's Ministers will vindicate their consistency, how 
they will show that their conduct has at all times been guided by 
the same principles, or even that their conduct at the present time 
is guided by any fixed principle at all, I am unable to conjecture. 



MAYNOOTEI COLLEGE GRANT.* 

april 14, 1845. 

Sir, I have no intention of following the hon. Gentleman [Mr. 
Gregory] who hist sat down into a discussion on an Amendment 
which has not been moved. When my hon. Friend the Member 
for Sheffield shall think it expedient to propose to us a Motion 
upon the subject which he has repeatedly introduced to the notice 
of the House, 1 may, perhaps, request your indulgence while I offer 
a few remarks on the question. At present it is sufficient that 
I should explain why I think it my duty to vote for the second 
reading of this Bill, which I think I cannot do better than by 
passing in review, as rapidly as I can, the principal objections 
which have been made in this House, and out of the House, to 
the measure now before us. It seems to me, Sir, that these 
objections, or at least by far the greater part of' them, may be 
readily arranged under three heads. There is, in the first place, a 
large class of persons who, it seems, do not object to the grant to 
Maynooth already made; but object to the proposed increase of the 
existing grant. There is, again, a large and respectable body ot 
persons who object to any grant whatever — to the old grant a:? 
well as to the increase for religious purposes. They conceive that 
they are not justified, either as private individuals or as Members 
of a State, in contributing to the propagation of what they deem 
to be error. There are others who take a still wider ground — > 
those who say that, without inquiry whether the Catholic Church 
teaches truth or error, they on either supposition object to any ard 

* JJuftsard, 3d Series, vol, lx#U. p. ftyfMHft 



256 MAYNOOTH COLLEGE GRANT. 

every endowment for its clergy, or the principle of opposing all 
State endowments. They are advocates of the voluntary system; 
and if consistent to the opinions they profess, they ought equally 
to disapprove of the maintenance by the State of the endowments 
of the Established Church of Ireland as well as the grant to the 
Presbyterian clergy. Now, as to the first of these parties I must 
confess I am exceedingly surprised that there should be found in 
this country any person not objecting to the old grant, who yet 
takes the very fallacious and untenable ground of objecting to its 
increase. I am forced, however, to believe that there are many 
such persons. When I remember how quietly this- grant has 
passed in former years, and with what violent excitement the 
proposed increase is opposed ; what small minorities have voted 
against this grant in former years, and how large a body of 
persons come down to vote against the increase, I must think 
there is a very considerable number of persons who, if the right 
hou. Baronet at the head of the Government had merely proposed 
the original vote of £9,000, would have /oted for it without the 
smallest scruple, and yet whose minds arc greatly troubled by his 
proposal. I cannot but wonder that it should be so, for this is a 
question which 1 cannot conceive that any human ingenuity can 
convert into one of principle. Of all the strange contrarieties 
which ever entered into the human mind, this is the strangest, foi 
the question is purely and solely one between £9,000, and £26,000 
a-year. ["No, No."] I cannot tell how hon. Gentlemen opposite 
understand the objection I am considering, but thus it appears to 
mo. I am speaking not of those who object to any grant to 
Maynooth ; I am speaking of those who say that if a vote of 
£9,000 had been proposed, as last year, they would have voted 
for it, and yet who do object to the increase to which we are asked 
to consent. I understand the advocate of the voluntary system, 
who says, " Whether the Roman Catholic Church teaches truth or 
error, I on principle will grant it no support.". I* understand tho 



MATNOOTH COLLEGE GRANT. 257 

zealous Protestant, who says, "On account of the errors of the 
Roman Catholic Church, I think it wrong to give her clergy any 
support from the public puree, and, therefore, I refuse my consent;" 
and I understand the Protestant, equally zealous, but in my opinion 
more enlightened, who says, u In spite off the errors of the Roman 
Catholic Church, I do think myself at liberty to grant some aid." 
But I cannot understand the man who admits the propriety of the 
former grant, and resists the increase ; who says, " In spite of the 
errors of the Roman Catholic Church, I am at liberty to grant her 
aid ; but on account of her errors that aid shall be a pittance it is 
disgraceful for me to give, and her to receive ; her rites are so 
superstitious that I will give her a squalid, dilapidated chapel 
wherein to perforin them; her doctrines arc so absurd, that 1 will 
find a professor to teach them, to whom I will give wages I would 
not offer to my groom." I cannot understand those Gentlemen 
who say they have no objection to a Catholic establishment, 
provided it be shabby ; they have no objection to support those 
persons who are to teach the doctrines of religion, and administer 
the sacraments to the next generation of the Irish people, provided 
only those persons shall cost something less than the pay of a 
common infantry soldier; they have no objection to board them, 
provided only the allowance for their board be made so scanty 
that they are compelled, as we have been told, to break up their 
studies before the proper time, merely for want of provisions ; they 
have no objections to lodge them, if only they are packed like 
pigs in a sty, exposed to wind and rain. Is it possible to conceive 
anything more frivolous or absurd ? Can any principle of action 
be clearer or better founded than this — whatever it is lawful to do, 
you ought to do it well? Can anything be more evident than 
that, if it be right to keep up a college, it is right to keep it up 
respectably ? Whatever this institution be, whether good or bad, 
it is clearly an important institution ; it is established to form the 
opinions and moral character of those who are themselves to form. 



258 MAYNOOTH COLLEGE GRANT. 

the moral character of a nation. It may be right to withhold 
patronage from it altogether; that b a very grave question; but 
what I say is, if you do give patronage at all, it should be patron- 
age worthy of the greatness of the object and the dignity of the 
donor. It is with a peculiarly, bad grace, I must say, that the 
Member for the University to which I have the honour to belong 
—a Gentleman who never voted, or thought it necessary on 
any occasion whatever, to oppose the grant of £9,000 — now 
opposes strenuously the grant of £26,000; I say, that objections 
of that sort come with a very bad grace from one who is the 
Representative of an English University. When I consider with 
what mao-nificence religion and science are endowed in our 
Universities ; when I call to mind their long streets of palaces, 
their venerable cloisters, their trim gardens — their chapels with 
organs, altar-pieces, and stained windows; when I remember their 
schools, libraries, museums, and galleries of art ; when I remember 
too, all the solid comforts provided in those places both for 
instructors and pupils, the stately dwellings of the principals, the 
commodious apartments of the fellows and scholars; when I 
remember that the very sizars and servitors are lodged far better 
than yon propose to lodge those priests who are to teach the 
whole people of Ireland ; when I think of the halls, the common- 
rooms, the bowling-greens, even the stabling of Oxford and 
Cambridge — the display of old plate on the tables, the good cheer 
of the kitchen, the oceans of excellent ale in the buttery, and when 
I remember from whom all this splendour and plenty arc derived ; 
when I remember the faith of Edward III. and Henry VI., of 
Margaret of Anjou and Margaret of Richmond, of William of 
Wykeham, of Archbishop Chicheley and Cardinal. Wolsey ; when 
I remember what we have taken from the Roman Catholic religbn 
— -King's College, New College, my own Trinity College, and 
Christ's Church — and when I look at the miserable Do-the-boys- 
gall we have given them in reftjrn— I ask myself if we, and if. the 



MAYNOOTH CO LI. ICG E GRANT. '25$ 

Protestant religion, aire not disgraced by the comparison ? If the 
advocates of this opinion have convinced themselves that there 
is a clear distinction of principle between £9,000 and £26,000 — 
if they can show us it is a question of principle — if some of them 
would rise and do that — I, for one, shall be ready to give way. I 
believe I may safely defy any of them ; and I must remain 
unconverted by them. There are some who say that a contract 
was made at the time of the Union with the Irish Parliament ; 
and this, it is suggested, binds us to the maintenance, but not to 
the increase of the grant. Now, I must freely say, with those 
petitioners who have laid so much paper and parchment on your 
Table, that I do not admit the existence of this contract. Even 
if there be any contract with the old Irish Parliament and people, 
still this would not absolve us from the business of legislating for 
this College. If the measure of endowment be in itself pernicious 
we have a right to deal with the grant on the ground of its own 
merits. I do not think there is likely to be much dispute between 
Gentlemen in this House on that head. I conceive I am as much 
at liberty to deal with this as with any other subject concerning 
Ireland — to vote for the abolition or reduction of the grant, as I 
should be to vote on a grant for the artillery or the marines. 
Suppose you admit a contract; that will not get yon out of the 
difficulty. How would that prove the radical difference between 
£9,000 and £26,000 ? Construe it as you would, you would not 
be able to establish the distinction you aim it. What is the 
contract ? Are you bound to do for Maynooth what the Irish Parlia- 
ment did for it ? Or are you bound to maintain it efficiently and 
respectably ? If you are only bound to do for it what the Irish 
Parliament did, £9,000 is too much ; but if you are bound to 
maintain it efficiently and respectably, then I defy any person to 
argue that the £26,000 now proposed is too much. I sav, there- 
fore, it seems to me impossible that anv such distinction as hon. 
Gentlemen opposite suppose can be established. If the grant of 



MO MAYNOOttt COLLEGE GilAttf. 

£26,000 be innocent, vote it; but I think it cannot be contended 
that if .£26,000 would be wrong, because it is contrary to out 
moral obligations to encourage error, a grant of £9,000 would not 
be wrong also. I come now to an objection which I should be 
sorry to treat lightly — I mean, the religious objection. That is, 
simply stated, " The Church of Rome teaches error ; and you are 
not justified, cither as individuals or a State, in contributing to its 
propagation." I must say, I cannot admit the soundness of that 
proposition : I think it wholly impossible to deny that there are 
occasions on which the State is bound to contribute from its 
resources to objects, on the promotion of which the propagation of 
some amount of error may be consequent. Let me be clearly 
understood. It is undoubtedly a very plausible proposition, that 
you ought always to do your best to spread truth, and never to 
propagate error; but if the constitution of the human mind and 
the state of the world be such that it is impossible, on any large 
and extensive scale, to propagate truth at all without some inter- 
mixture of error ; if no machinery has yet been devised by which 
error could be absolutely excluded ; if even those rays of moral 
light which come down to us from on high, pure and perfect as 
they are in themselves, necessarily become in some degree re- 
fracted, distorted, and obscure, when they enter that dark and 
gross atmosphere in which we breathe — what then ? I presume 
that no Christian, no Protestant Christian, will deny that if it be 
possible to propagate pure truth, it must be by the circulation of 
the Scriptures; and yet, when that is tried — when you circulate 
the Scriptures, what difficulties are experienced ! I remember 
being in the East, when a translation into the Oriental languages 
was proceeding with great vigour, munificently assisted by societies 
in this country, assiduously attended by men whose object was to 
enlighten the natives of India. The translation was very well 
executed, but every skilful Orientalist knew that there were 
errors in it ; and every one must acknowledge how impossible it 



MAYN00TH COLLEGE GRANT. 261 

would be to take any particular version of Sacred Truth and say, 

human infirmity has left no error here — human transcribers are to 

be detected in no fault. If that be the case even with the 

Scriptures themselves, how much more will it be the case with the 

institutes of men! — how much more will all the machinery they 

employ with schools and books ; for you may send forth teachers 

and circulate tracts, but neither the one nor the other are inspired. 

x\re your teachers infallible, are your tracts perfect ? Look at your 

own Church ! Many persons advocate an addition to the means 

of religious instruction already existing in this country : will thev 

say that the Church teaches truth without admixture of error? 

Does both the Church of England and the Church of Scotland teach 

truth without any admixture of error? or that, though the same 

in principle, their doctrines and government do in many respects 

differ ? Then, \\ hen you endow and protect both these institutions, 

must vou not in one case or the other be disseminating a certain 

amount of error? Go into either of them, which is perfect? Take 

the Church of Scotland before the late unhappy separation. Will 

anybody say that there was not a large amount of error within its 

communion? There were at one time, Dr. Robertson and Dr. 

Erskinc preaching under the same roof, one in the morning, the 

other in the afternoon, upon two different systems of doctrine ; so 

different that the admirers of the one thought those of the other 

fanatics, while they in their turn regarded the former as Arians. 

Again, is the Church of England one in which no error is to be 

found? Is not the whole country convulsed with the different 

doctrines which are taught by its ministers ? My hon. Friend the 

Member for Oxford wants Church extension ; he demands a large 

addition to the Establishment; is it because he thinks no error is 

taught within the Church? Is it not absolutely certain, that 

whether those who are called Tractarians or the Evangelical party 

be in the right, some people get into the pulpits who are very much 

in. \\\q wrong? My kon. Friend himself will say that one or other 



262 MAYNOOTI-I COLLEGE GRANT. 

of these propagates opinions which beholds to be erroneous. It ia 
quite clear, then, that in the Church of England a great deal of 
error is taught: and if we were to vote one or two millions to 
increase the endowments of the Church of England, a great 
proportion must go to the propagation of error. What is the 
result ? M} 7 hon. Friend defends his plan of Church extension. 
The missionary at Serampore defends his translation of the Scrip 
tures, many copies of which he gives away among the native 
population. But do we propagate error for the sake of propagating 
error ? Far from it. But some alloy must necessarily be mixed 
with the truth. It is the effect of human infirmity. Therefore 
the principle which we follow is this : where truth is of such 
importance and value that it is in the highest degree desirable it 
should be known, we will not refrain from circulating it, in spite of 
an alloy of error in it, by any means in our power. We think it 
better, in the first place, that the people should be taught some 
portion of truth than not be taught at all ; and secondly, we do 
not stand in the way of those who would teach more truth. It 
is much better that the people of Ireland should be Roman 
Catholics than have no religion at all. The argument that we 
might as well contribute to teach the people the worship of 
Juggernaut and Kalee, is of no force. It is not logically necessary 
that we should go to the extreme of supporting Juggernaut and 
Kalee. That which is good and valuable in the Roman Catholic 
religion is so much out of proportion to that which has nothing at 
all good and valuable, that it is infinitely better that the Irish 
peasantry should live and die Roman Catholics, than indulge their 
passions without any religious restraints, bear the calamities of 
life without the consolations of relio-ion, and die at last without 
religious hope. In the course, therefore, which it is now proposed 
to pursue, we are, I conceive, conducing to their instruction and 
advantage. Then the question is, Do I stand in the way of any- 
thing better ? Po X offer an obstacle |o tlie advancement of pure 



MATNOOTH COLLEGE GftAtt*. £6$ 

religion? Will that bo impeded by giving better instruction to 
those who are to teach the people ? If there is any Gentleman in 
this House who, after the experience of generations, believes that 
by withholding this grant to Maynooth College lie gives an 
impulse whereby to bear down the Roman Catholic religion, i 
think he ought on that ground to vote against the grant; but I 
find it difficult to imagine, after the experience we have had, that 
any Gentleman can seriously be of that opinion. These, then, are 
the considerations that satisfy mv mind. I do not aim at pro- 
pagating error. To do so is not only wrong, but diabolical ; but I 
say that it is of the greatest importance that Christianity, even in a 
form which I think greatly tainted with error, should prevail in 
Ireland, and have influence on the peasantry ; and seeing not the 
slightest probability that it would have that influence except in the 
form of Roman Catholicism, I think we are at liberty to confer this 
boon in spite of the error which I believe to be mixed up with the 
Roman Catholic Religion. Nay, I think we are bound to provide 
competent instruction for those who are to teach that religion. 
Then as to the objection founded on the voluntary principle. I 
admit that there is great force in that objection ; but I say, even 
if we were to admit the general argument to be in favour of the 
voluntary principle, that this case forms an exception. Is there 
any case like it? Here you see Ireland with a population of some 
eight millions, and with an Established Church, the members of 
which amount only to about S00,000, richly endowed. I recollect 
that it was stated in the debates of 1833, that among the twelve 
prelates retained there was divided the sum of £70,000. There i: 
an archbishop with £10,000, and there are bishops with largi 
emoluments. You have, at the same time, the Protestant Dis- 
senters in the North of Ireland receiving in another form an 
endowment from the State ; and then you have four-fifths of the 
population — the poorest of all — those who stand the most in need 
of assistance from the State (if any have a right to it), and who 



^64 MAYNOOfii COLLEGE OfeAKf. 

are the very people for whom these endowments were intended by 
the donors, receiving no aid from the Government in the way of 
payment of their spiritual teachers. Even if yon deny the validity 
of endowments generally, can yon say that this is not a case which 
stands by itself? and can yon apply to it, even if yon are opposed 
to State endowments generally, an argument founded on snch an 
objection ? I was quite astonished to hear the lion. Member for 
Shrewsbury tell ns that, if we made this grant, it would be utterly 
impossible for ns to resist the claim of the Wesleyan Methodists 
and other dissenters. Are the cases analogous ? Is there the 
slightest resemblance between them? There are 16,000,000 of 
people in England. Show me that the Wesleyan Methodists 
number 13,000,000 ; that there is an Established Church here 
with 1,500,000 only of persons belonging to it; that the other 
dissenters arc receiving a Regium Donum — add to this that large 
endowments bequeathed to John Wesley and his followers have 
been taken away by Parliament and given to the Church, and that 
the Wesleyan Methodists ask for £26,000 a-year to educate their 
clergy. Give me that case, and I will be prepared to take it into con- 
sideration. But von will brine: me no such case either from Eno-- 
land or the whole world. It is impossible to give it anywhere but. 
Ireland. How could it be ? It could not be in England ; it could 
not be in France; nor in Prussia. It could be only in a country 
in one particular situation ; and what I am going to mention is a 
consideration which reconciles me much to laying on the nation 
this Imrden. It could be only in the case of a weak country con 
nected with a more powerful country which had abused its powei 
and enabled the minority to triumph over the majority. Never but 
in Ireland, and under the circumstances I have mentioned, did such 
a case exist ; and while these great endowments exi>t, and arc 
appropriated in a different way from their original intentions, I do 
not conceive that it is open to me, however strong my general 
feeling might be on the voluntary principle, to meet the Irish, who 



MAfttOOTH COLLEGE GRANT. <2$5 

ftsk for £ 17,000 more for the education of their priests, and say to 
them, I am on principle opposed to Mich a grant. Where the 
grant is to come from remains for an after discussion ; t! e qtnesth n 
now is whether it shali be made or not. H appears, therefore, 
perfectly clear to me, in the fi;st place, that if we have no scruple 
about granting £9,000, we can have no conscientious scruple 
about granting £26,000. In the second place, it seems to me to 
be impossible to maintain to the full extent that we ought never 
to contribute to propagate error, without making it impossible for 
the State or individuals to make exertions to propagate truth; 
and lastly, it appears to me that the particular circumstances in 
which the Catholic population of Ireland is placed in reference to 
the Established Church of that country, do, even supposing the 
voluntary principle to be generally the sounder principle, take the 
case of Ireland out of the operation of that sound principle, and 
constitute it an exception. They make it one of a morbid charac- 
ter, and as it were a lusus naturce. Under such circumstances 1 
feel convinced that if we were to oppose this grant from any notion 
of asserting the principles of religious equality, we should only be 
giving a victory not to the friends of religious liberty, but to those 
who are the most opposed to religious liberty. These are the chief 
observations which I have to offer with respect to the measure 
itself; but another class of considerations has been forced upon 
our no! ice. We were called on, upon the first night of this debate, 
to oppose this measure, whatever its merits might be, because it 
was brought forward by men who could not justly or honorably 
bring it forward. A similar argument has been repeated to-night ; 
and I conceive, that on this occasion we may, and ought not from 
party spirit or vindictive feeling, but from a just regard for the 
public interest, and for the character of public men, to go into some 
of the circumstances connected with this matter. Undoubtedly it 
is of the Highest importance that we should pass good laws, but it 

is also of the highest importance that public men should have 
VOL. II. 12 



288 itAVtfOOTil COLLEGE ORAtff. 

some great fixed principles, and that they should be guided bv 
those fixed principles in office and in opposition. It is most 
important that it should rot appear to the world that a mere 
change of situation produces a oomplete change of opinion. I 
think I need not attempt to prove that a particular measure may 
be exceedingly good, and may yet, when viewed in connection 
with the former conduct and opinions of those who bring it 
forward, be lowered in pubiic estimation. When such is the case, 
our course is clear. Wcouo-ht to distinguish between the measure 
and its authors. The measure we are bound, on account of its 
intrinsic merits, to support; while with -regard to its authors it 
may be our duty to speak of their conduct in terms of censure. 
In such terms of censure I feel it my duty to speak of the conduct 
of Her Majesty's present ad\ iters. I have no feeling of personal 
hostility; and I trust that the political hostility I shall avow by 
no means precludes me from admiting that the right hon. 
Baronet at the head of the Government is a man of considerable 
capabilities as a legislator; he possesses great talents for debate, 
for the management of this House, and for the transaction of 
official business. He has great knowledge, and I doubt not is 
actuated by a sincere desire to promote the interests of the 
country ; but it is impossible for me with truth to deny that there 
is too much ground for the reproaches of those who having, in 
spite of bitter experience, a second time trusted and raised him to 
power, hive fonnd themselves a second time deluded. It is impos- 
sible for me not to say that it has been too much the habit of the 
right hon. Baronet to make use of, when in opposition (as he has 
done in reference to the present question), passions with which he 
has not the slighest sympathy, and prejudices which he regards 
with profound contempt. As soon as he reaches power, a change 
— a salutary change for the country — takes place. The instru 
meats are flung asi.le — the ladder by which he climbed is kicked 
down. This is not h solitary instance, and lam forced to say that 



MAYNOOTH COLLEGE GRANT. 267 

tbis sort of conduct is pursued by the rigfit Iron. Baronet on some- 
thing like a system. I shall not attempt to go over the events of 
years ago. I shall say nothing more of 1827 and 1829 than this 
— that one such change is quite enough for one man. Again, the 
right hon. Baronet was in opposition, and again he and those with 
whom he had acted returned to their old tactics. I will not go 
through the history of all those manoeuvres by which the Whig 
Government was overthrown; I will only ask this question, whether 
there be one single class of men which rallied :\>und the right hon. 
Baronet at that time which does not now declare bitterlv against 
him? One part of this subject I will leave to the management 
of the landed Gentlemen, and I shall confine myself to the matter 
before us. I defy any man to deny that the cry which most 
injured the Melbourne Government was the No Popery cry. This 
was admitted by the hon. Member for northamptonshire (Mr. 
O'Brien). Is there a single person in this house who believes 
that if four years ago my noble Friend (Lord J. Russell) ha 1 
brought in this Bill, it would not have been opposed by the whole 
party then in opposition ? Indeed, four years ago we were dis- 
cussing a very different Bill. At that time the party in opposition 
brought in a Bill which, though under another name, was neither 
more nor less than a Bill to disfranchise the people of Ireland by 
tens of thousands. They brought it in and pressed it on, repre- 
senting it to be necessarv for the good government of Ireland ; 
and all their followers declared that it was neces.-ary it should 
pass in order to purge the House of Commons of the minions of 
Popery. It was argued, on the other hand, that that Bill would 
destroy the Irish constituency, and the right hon. Gentlemen 
opposi'e have since shown by their conduct that they knew it 
would have that effect. We pleaded for delay — we asked the 
party in opposition to wait till we institute inquiries as to the 
effect of the measure — we called on them to wait at least till the 
nejet Session, £io notice was taken of our appeals ; the Irish 



268 MAYNOOTII COLLEGE GRANT. 

Registration Bill was stated to be of the utmost urgency, and it 
was pressed on the House. At length a change took place — a 
change from opposition to power. The right hon. Baronet's 
instruments were needed no more. The right hon. Baronet has 
been in power for four years, and has had a Parliament which 
would have passed the Irish Registration Bill. Where is the 
Irish Registration Bill ? Flung away, positively pronounced by its 
authors to be so oppressive and destructive of the representative 
system that no Minister of the Crown could venture to propose it. 
That Bill having been thrown away, what has been substituted for 
it? Why, the present Bill for the endowment of May nooth College. 
Did ever person witness such legerdemain ? You offer to the 
eager, honest, hotheaded Protestant, a Bill to take privileges 
away from the Roman Catholics of Ireland, if he will only assist 
you to power. He lends you his aid ; and then, when you are in 
power, you turn round on him and give him a Bill for the 
religious endowment of the Roman Catholic College in Ireland. 
Is it. strange that such proceedings as these should excite indigna 
tion? Can we wonder at the clamour which has been raised in 
the country, or be surprised at the petitions which have been 
showered, thick as a show storm, on the Table of the House ? Is 
it possible that the people out of doors should not feel indignation 
at seeing that the very parties who, when we were in office, voted 
against the Maynooth grant, are now being whipped into the 
House in order to vote for an increased Mavnooth grant? The 
natural consequences follow. Can you wonder that all those 
fierce spirits whom you have taught to harass us, now turn round 
and begin to worry you? The Orangeman raises his howl, and 
Exeter-hall sets up its bray, and Mr. M'Neile is horror-stricken to 
think that a still larger grant is intended for " the priests of Baal " 
at the table of " Jezebel ;" and your Protestant operatives of 
Dublin call for the impeachment of the Minister in exceedingly 
fca4 Englis)}. But what did you expect? Pid vow think, whep 



MAVNOOTM COLLEGE GRANT. 269 

you called up for your own purposes the devil of religious ani- 
mosities, that you could lay him as easily as yon raised him? 
Did you think, when Session after Session you went on attack- 
ing: those whom you knew to be in the right, and flattering the 
prejudices of those whom you knew to be in the wrong, that the 
day of reckoning would never come ? That day has come ; and 
now, on that day, you are doing penance for the disingenuous- 
ness of years. If it be not so, clear your fame as public men, 
manfully before this House and this country. Show us some 
clear principle, with respect to Irish affairs, which has guided you, 
both in office and in opposition. Show us how, if you are honest 
in 18-15, you could have been honest in 1841. Explain to us 
why, after having, when out of place, goaded Ireland into mad- 
ness, in order to ingratiate yourselves with England, you are now 
throwing England into a flame in order to ingratiate yourselves 
with Ireland. Let us hear some argument that, as Ministers, you 
arc entitled to support, which shall not equally show that you 
were the most factious and unprincipled Opposition this country 
ever saw. Sir, these are my opinions respecting the conduct of 
the Ministry ; but am I, therefore, to take the counsel of the hon. 
Member for Shrewsbury (Mr. Disraeli), and vote against this Bill? 
Not so. I believe the fate of the Bill, and the fate of the Ministry, 
to be in our hands ; but I believe the spectacle of inconsistency 
which is exhibited on that Bench will do mischief enough. That 
mischief will not be lessened, but infinitely increased, if an an- 
swering display of inconsistency be made on this side uf the 
House. Admit that the circumstances of this Bill being brought 
iti by Tories or Conservatives, whichever they term themselves, 
may of itself produce evils, they would be doubled, if it were 
rejected by means of the Whigs. It seems to me, that then we 
should have nothing before us but one vast shipwreck of all the 
public character in the kingdom. And, therefore it is, that 
though at the cost of sacrifices which it is not agreeable to auy 



270 MAYNOOTII COLLEGE GRANT. 

man to make, and restraining many feelings that I own stir 
strongly within me, I have determined to give to this Bill 
through all its stages my most steady support. To this Bill, and 
to every Bill emanating from the Government, which shall appear 
to me calculated to make Great Britain and Ireland one united 
kingdom, I will give my support, regardless of obloquy — regard- 
less of the risk which I know I run of losing mv seat in Parlia- 
ment. Obloquy so earned, I shall readily meet. As to my scat 
in Parliament I will never hold it by an ignominious tenure; and 
I am sure, that I can never lose it in a more honourable cause 



271 



APRIL 23, 1845.* 

1 was desirous, Sir, to catch your eye this evening, because it 
happens that I hav r e never yet found an opportunity of fully ex- 
plaining my views on the important subject of the Irish Church. 
Indeed, I was not in this country when that subject for a time 
threw every other into the shade, disturbed the whole political 
world, produced a schism in the Administration of Lord Grey, and 
overthrew the short Administration of the right hon. Baronet 
opposite. The Motion now before us opens, I conceive, the whole 
question. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, indeed, asks 
us only to transfer £26,000 a-year from the Established Church 
of Ireland to the College of Maynooth. But this Motion, I think, 
resembles an action of ejectment brought for a single farm, with 
the view of trying the title to a large estate. Whoever refuses to 
assent to what is now proposed, must be considered as holding the 
opinion that the property of the Irish Church ought to be held 
inviolate : and I can scarcely think that any person will vote for" 
what is now proposed, who is not prepared to go very much 
farther. The point at issue, I take, therefore, to be this — whether 
the Irish Church, as now constituted, shall be maintained or not? 
Now, Sir, when a legislator is called upon to decide whether an 
institution shall be maintained or not, it seems to me that he 
ought in the first place to examine whether it be a good or a bad 
institution. This may sound like a truism ; but if I am to judge 
by the speeches which on this and former occasions have been 
made by gentlemen opposite, it is no truism, but an exceedingly 

* Hansard, 3d Series, voL lxxk. p. 1180-1198. 



2?2 MATNOOTH COLLEGE GRANT*. 

recondite truth. I, Sir, think the Established Church of Ireland a 
bad institution. I will go farther. I am not speaking in anger, 
or with any wish to excite anger in others; I am not speaking 
with rhetorical exaggeration — I am calmly and deliberately ex- 
pressing in the only appropriate terms an opinion which I formed 
many years ago ; which all my observations and reflections have 
confirmed ; and which I am prepared to support by reasons — 
when I say that of all the institutions now existing in the civilized 
world, the Established Church of Ireland seems to me the most 
absurd. I cannot help thinking that the speeches of those who 
defend this Church, suffice of themselves to prove that ray views 
are just. For who ever heard anybody defend it on its merits ? 
Has any gentleman to-night defended it on its merits ? We are 
told of the Roman Catholic oath, as if that oath, whatever be 
its construction, whatever be the extent of the obligation which 
it lays on the consciences of those who take it, could possibly 
prove this Church to be a good thing. We are told that the 
Catholics of hOte', both laymen and divines, fifty years ago, de- 
clared that, if they were relieved from the disabilities under 
which they then lay, they should willingly see the Church of 
Ireland in possession of all its endowments; as if anything that 
anybody said fifty years ago could absolve us from the plain duty 
of doing what is now best for the country. We are told of the 
Fifth Article of Union ; as if the Fifth article of Union were more 
sacred than the Fourth. Surely, if there be any Article of the 
Union which ought to be regarded as inviolable, it is the Fourth, 
which settles the number of Members whom Great Britain and 
Ireland respectively are to send to Parliament. Yet the provisions 
of the Fourth Article have been altered with the almost unanimous 
assent of all parties in the State. The change was proposed by 
the noble Lord who is now Secretary for the Colonies. It was 
supported by the right lion. Baronet the Secretary for the Home 
Department, and by other Membei s of the present Administration, 



MAYNOOftt COLLEGE GRANT. 273 

Atid so far were the opponents of the Reform Bill from objecting 
to this infraction of the Treaty of Union, that they were disposed to 
go still farther. I well remember the night on winch we debated 
the question, whether Members should be given to Finsbnry, 
Marylebone, Lambeth, and the Tower Hamlets. On that occasion, 
the Tories attempted to reduce the Irish Reformers from us, by 
promising that Ireland should have a share of the plunder of the 
metropolitan districts. After this, Sir, I must think it childish in 
Gentlemen opposite to appeal to the Fifth Article of the Union. 
With still greater surprise, did I hear the right hon. Gentleman the 
Secretary for Iieland say, that if we adopt this Amendment, we 
shall make all landed and funded property insecure. I am really 
ashamed to answer such an argument. Nobody proposes to 
touch any vested interest; and surely it cannot be necessary for 
me to point out to the right h<m. Gentleman the distinction 
between property in which some person has a vested interest, 
and property in which no person has a vested interest. That 
distinction is part of the very rudiments of political science. Then 
the right hon. Gentleman quarrels with the form of the Amend- 
ment. Why, Sir, perhaps a more convenient form might have 
been adopted. But is it by cavils like these that a great 
institution should be defended ? And who ever heard the 
Established Church of Ireland defended except by cavils like 
these ? Who ever heard any of her advocates take the manly, 
the statesmanlike course ? Who ever heard any of her advocates 
say — " I de end this institution because it is a good institution : 
the ends for which an Established Church exists are such and 
such: and I will show vou that this Church attains those ends?" 
Nobodv savs this. Nobody has the hardihood to say it. What 
divine, what political specula or, who has written in defence of 
ecclesiastical establishments, ever defended such establishments on 
grounds which will support the Church of Ireland ? What 

panegvric has ever been pronounced on the Churches of England 

12* 



274 MAftfooTfi C6UME GtiAtff. 

and Scotland, which is not a satire on the Church of Ireland 1 
What traveller comes among us, who is not moved to wonder and 
derision by the Church of Ireland ? What foreign writer on 
British affairs, whether European or American, whether Protestant 
or Catholic, whether Conservative or Liberal, whether partial to 
England or prejudiced against England, ever mentions the Church 
of Ireland, without expressing his amazement that such an 
establishment should exist among reasonable men ? And those 
who speak thus of it speak justly. Is there anything else like it! 
Was there ever anything else like it t The world is full of 
ecclesiastical establishments. But such a portent as this Church 
of Ireland, is nowhere to be found. Look round the Continent 
of Europe. Ecclesiastical establishments from the White Sea to 
the Mediterranean ; ecclesiastical establishments from the Wolga 
to the Atlantic : but nowhere the Church of a small minority 
enjoying exclusive establishment. Look at America. There you 
have all forms of Christianity, from Mormonism, if you call Mor- 
monism Christianity, to Romanism. In some places you have 
the voluntary system. Tn some you have several religions con- 
nected with the State. In some you have the solitary ascendancy 
of a single Church. But nowhere from the Arctic Circle to Cape 
Horn, do you find the Church of a small minority exclusively 
established. Look round our own Empire. We have an Esta- 
blished Church in England ; it is the Church of the majority. 
There is an Established Church in Scotland. When it was set up 
it was the Church of the majority. A few months ago it was the 
Church of the majority. I am not sure that even, after the late 
unhappy disruption, it is the Church of the minority. ].n our 
Colonies the State does much for the support of religion ; but in 
no Colony, I believe, do we give exclusive support to the religion 
of the minority. Nay, even in those parts of the Empire where 
the great body of the population is attached to absurd and 
immoral superstitions, you have not been guilty of the folly and 



MAYNOOTH COLLEGE GRANT. 275 

injustice of calling on them to pay for a Church which they do not 
want. We have not portioned out Bengal and the Carnatic into 
parishes, and scattered Christian rectors with stipends and glebes, 
among millions of Pagans and Mahometans. We keep, indeed, a 
small Christian establishment, or rather three small Christian 
establishments, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic. But we 
keep them only for the Christians in our civil and military 
services ; and we leave untouched the revenues of the mosques 
and temples. In one country alone is to be seen the spectacle of 
a community of 8,000,000 of human beings, with a Church which 
is the Church of only 800,000. It has been often said, and has 
been repeated to-night by the hon. Member for Radnor, that this 
Church, though it includes only a tenth part of the population, 
iias more than half the wealth of Ireland. But is that an arjm- 
incut in favour of the present system ? Is it not tbe strongest 
argument that can be urged in favour of an entire change? It is 
true that there are many cases in which it is fit that property 
should prevail over number. Those cases may, I think, be all 
arranged in two classes. One class consists of those cases in 
which the preservation or improvement of property is the object 
in view. Thus in a railway company, nothing can be more 
rcas. •■nahlc than that one proprietor who holds 500 shares should 
have more power than five proprietors who hold one share each. 
The other class of cases in which property may justly confer 
privileges is where superior intelligence is required. Property is 
indeed hut a very imperfect test of intelligence. But, when we 
are legislating on a large scale, it is perhaps the best which we 
can apply. For where there is no property, there can very 
seldom be any mental cultivation. It is on this principle that 
special jurors who have to try causes of peculiar nicety are taken 
from a wealthier order than that which furnishes common jurors. 
But. there cannot be a more false analogy than to reason from 
these cases to the case of an J3stabU*bed Chiirch. So far is it 



276 MAYNOOTH COLLEGE GRANT. 

from being true that in establishing a Church we ought to pal 
more regard to one rich man than to five poor men, that the 
direct reverse is the sound rule. We ought to pay more regard to 
one poor man than to five rich men. For in the first place, the 
public ordinances of religion are of far more importance to the 
poor man than to the rich man. I do not mean to say that a rich 
man may not be the better for hearing sermons and joining in 
public prayers. But these things are not indispensable to him ; 
and if he is so situated that he cannot have them, he may find 
substitutes. He has money to buy books, time to study them, 
understanding to comprehend them. Every day he may com- 
mune with the minds of Hooker, Leighton, and Barrow. He 
therefore stands less in need of the oral instruction of a divine 
than a peasant who cannot read, or who, if he can read, has no 
money to procure books, or leisure to peruse them. Such a 
peasant, unless instructed by word of mouth, can know no more 
of Christianity than a wild Hottentot. Nor is this all. The poor 
man not only needs the help of a minister of religion more than 
the rich man, but is also less able to procure it. If there were ik> 
Established Church, people in our rank of life would always be 
provided with preachers to their mind at an expense which they 
would scarcely feel. But, when a poor man who can hardly give 
his children their fill of potatoes, has to sell his pig in order to 
pay something to his priest, the burden is a heavy one. This is, 
in fact, the strongest reason for having an established Church in 
any country. It is the one reason which prevents me from joining 
with the partisans of the voluntary system. I should think their 
arguments unanswerable if the question regarded the upper and 
middle classes only. If I would keep up the Established Church 
of England, it is not for the sake of lords, and baronets, and 
country gentlemen of £5,000 a-year, and rich bankers in the city, 
I know that such people will always have churches, aye, and 
cathedrals, and organs, and rich communion plate. The persp^ 



MATNOOTH COLLEGE GRANT. 211 

about whom 1 am uneasy is the working man ; the man wjic 
would find it difficult to pay even 5s. or 10.9. a-year out of his 
small earnings for the ministrations of religion. What is to be- 
come of him under the voluntary system ? Is he to go without 
religious instruction altogether? That we should all think a 
great evil to himself and a great evil to society. Is he to pay for 
it out of his slender means? That would be a heavy tax. Is he 
to be dependent on the liberality of others. That is a somewhat 
precarious and a somewhat humiliating dependence. I prefer, I 
own, that system under which there is, in the rudest and most 
secluded districts, a house of God, where public worship is per- 
formed after a fashion acceptable to the great majority of the 
community, and where the poorest may partake of the ordinances 
of religion, not as an alms, but as a right. But does this argu- 
ment apply to a Church like the Church of Ireland? It is not 
necessary on this occasion to decide whether the arguments in 
favour of ecclesiastical establishments, or the arguments in favour 
of the voluntary system, be the stronger. There are weighty 
considerations on both sides. Balancing them as well as I can, I 
think that, as respects England, the preponderance is on the 
side of the Establishment. But, as respects Ireland, there is no 
balancing. All the weights arc in one scale. All the arguments 
which incline us against the Church of England, and all those 
arguments which incline us in favour of the Church of England, 
are alike arguments against the Church of Ireland ; against the 
Church of the few, agaiust the Church of the wealthy, against the 
Church which, reversing every r-r.nciple on which a Christian 
Church should be founded, fills the rich with its good things, and 
sends the hungry empty away. One view which has repeatedly, 
both in this House and out of it, been taken of the Church of 
Ireland, seems to deserve notice. It is admitted, as indeed it 
could not well be denied, that this Church does not perform the 
functions which are everywhere, else expected from similar institu 



%18 MAtfcOOTtt COLLEGE GRAtf*. 

tions ; that it does not instruct the body of the people ; that it 
does not administer religious consolation to the body of the 
people. But, it is said, we must regard this Church as an 
aggressive Church, a proselytizing Church, a Church militant 
among spiritual enemies. Its office is to spread Protestantism 
over Munster and Connaught. I remember well that, eleven years 
ago, when Lord Grey's Government proposed to reduce the num- 
ber of Irish bishoprics, this language was held. It was acknow- 
ledged that there were more bishops than the number of persons 
then in full communion with the Established Church required. 
But that number, we were assured, would not be stationary ; and 
the hierarchy, therefore, ought to be constituted with a view to 
the millions of converts who would soon require the care of 
Protestant pastors. I well remember the strong expression which 
was then used by my hon. Friend the Member for the University 
of Oxford. We must, he said, make allowance for the expansive 
force of Protestantism. A few nights ago a noble Lord for whom 
I, in common with the whole House, feel the greatest respect, the 
Member for Dorsetshire, spoke of the missionary character of the 
Church of Ireland. Now, Sir, if such language had been held at 
the Council Board of Queen Elizabeth when the constitution of 
this Church was first debated there, there would have been no 
cause for wonder Sir William Cecil or Sir Nicholas Bacon might 
very naturahy have said, "There are few Protestants now in 
Ireland, it is true. But when we consider how rapidly the 
Protestant theology has spread, when we remember that it is 
little more than forty years since Martin Luther began to preach 
against indulgences, and when we see that one half of Europe is 
now emancipated from the old superstition, we may reasonably 
expect that the Irish will soon follow the example of the other 
nations which have embraced the doctrines of the Reformation." 
Cecil, I say, and his colleagues might naturally entertain this 
expectation, and might without absurdity make prejwations for 



IAYNOOTH COLLEGE GRANT. 279 

An event which they regarded as in the highest degree probable. 
But we who have seen this system in full operation from the year 
1560 to the year 1845, ought to have been taught better, unless 
indeed we are past all teaching. Two hundred and eighty-five 
years has this Church been at work. What could have been done 
t\ r it in the way of authority, privileges, endowments, which has 
not been done? Did any other set of bishops and priests in the 
world ever receive so much for doing so little ? Nay, did any 
other set of bishops and priests in the world ever receive half as 
much for doing twice as much ? And what have we to show for 
all this lavish expenditure ? What but the most zealous Roman 
Catholic population on the face of the earth? Where you were 
100 years ago, where you were 200 years ago, there you are 
still, not victorious over the domain of the old faith, but painfully 
and with dubious success defending your own frontier, your own 
English pale. Sometimes a deserter leaves you. Sometimes a 
deserter steals over to you. Whether your gains or losses of this 
sort be the greater I do not know, nor is it worth while to inquire. 
On the great solid mass of the Roman Catholic population you 
have made no impression whatever. There they are, as they were 
ages ago, ten to one against the members of your Established 
Church. Explain this to me. I speak to you, the zealous Pro- 
testants on the other side of the House. Explain this to me on 
Protestant principles. If I were a Roman Catholic, I could easily 
account for the phenomena. If I were a Roman Catholic, I should 
content myself with saving that the mighty hand and the out. 
stretched arm had been put forth according to the promise m 
defence of the unchangeable Church; that he wno in the old 
time turned into blessings the curses of Balaam, and smote the 
host of Sennacherib, had signally confounded the arts and the 
power of heretic statesmen. But what is a Protestant to say 1 
He holds that, through the whole of this long conflict during 
which ten generations of men have been born and have iied, 



280 MAYNOOTH COLLEGE GRANT. 

reason and Scripture liave been on the side of the Established 
Clergy. Tell ns then what we are to say of this strange war, in 
which reason and Scripture, backed by wealth, by dignity, by the 
help of the civil power, have been found no match for oppressed 
and destitute error? The fuller our conviction that our doctrines 
are right, the fuller, if we are rational men, must be our conviction 
that our tactics have been wrong, and that we have been encum- 
bering the cause which we meant to aid. Observe, it is not only 
the comparative number of Roman Catholics and Protestants that 
may justly fnrnish us with matter for serious reflection. The 
quality as well as the quantity of Irish Romanism deserves to be 
considered. Is there any other country inhabited by a mixed 
population of Catholics and Protestants, any other country in 
which Protestant doctrines have long been freely promulgated 
from the press and from the pulpit, where the Roman Catholic 
spirit is so strong as in Ireland? I believe not. The Belgians 
are o-cncrallv considered as verv stubborn and zealous Roman 
Catholics. But I do not believe that in either stubbornness or 
zeal they equal the Irish. And this is the fruit of three centuries 
of Protest ant archbishops, bishops, archdeacons, deans, and rectors 
And yet where is the wonder? Is this a miracle that we shoulc 
stand aghast at it? Not at all. It is a result which human 
prudence ought to have long ago foreseen and long ago averted. 
It is the natural succession of effect to cause. If you do not 
understand it, it is because you do not understand what the 
nature and operation of a Church is. There are parts of the 
machinery of Government which may be just as efficient when 
they are hated as when they are loved. An army, a navy, a 
preventive service, a police force, -may do their work -whether 
the public feeling be with them or against them. Whether we 
dislike the corn laws or not, your custom-houses and your coast- 
guard keep out foreign coin. The multitude at Manchester 
ffSf »o| the less effectually disperse! by the veoua^ury, 



MAYNOOTII COLLEGE GKANT. 281 

because the interference of the yeomanry excited the bitterest 
indignation. There the object was to produce a material eiV el ; 
the material means were sufficient; and nothing more vv*as 
required. But a Chin eh exists for moral ends. A Church exists 
to be loved, to be reverenced, to be heard with docility, to ittfgn 
in the understandings and hearts of men. A Church which is 
abhorred, is useless or worse than useless; and to quarter a hostile 
Church on a conquered people, as you would quarter a soldierv, is 
therefore the most absurd of mistakes. This mistake our ancestors 
committed. They posted a Church in Ireland just as they posted 
garrisons in Ireland. The garrisons did their work. They were 
disliked. But that mattered not. They had their forts and their 
arms, and they kept down the aboriginal race. Bat the Church 
did not do its work. For to that work the love and confidence of 
the people were essential. I may remark in passing that, even 
under more favourable circumstances, a parochial priesthood is 
not a good engine for the purpose of making proselytes. The 
Church of Rome, which, whatever we may think of her ends, has 
shown no want of sagacity in the choice of means, knows this 
well. When she makes a great aggressive movement — and many 
such movements she has made with signal success — she employs 
not her parochial clergy, but a very different machinery. The 
business of her parish priests is to defend and govern what has 
been won. It is by the religious orders, and especially by the 
Jesuits, that the great acquisitions have been made. In Ireland 
your parochial clergy lay under two great, disadvantages. They 
were endowed, and they were hated; so richly endowed that few 
among them cared to turn missionaries; so bitterly hated that 
those few had but little success. They long contented themselves 
with receiving the emoluments arising from their benefices, and 
neglected all those means to which, in other parts of Europe, 
Protestantism had owed its victory. It is well known that of all 
the means employed by the Reformers of Germany, of England, 



282 MAYNOOTII COLLEGE GRANT. 

and of Scotland, for the purpose of moving the public mind, the 
most powerful was the Bible translated into vernacular tongues. 
In Ireland the Protestant Church had been established near half a 
century before the New Testament was printed in Erse. The 
whole Bible was not printed in Erse till this Church had existed 
more than 120 years. Nor did the publication at last take place 
under the patronage of the lazy and wealthy hierarchy. The 
expense was defrayed by a layman, the illustrious Robert Boyle. 
So things went on century after century. Swift, more than 100 
years ago, describes the prelates of his country as men gorged 
with wealth and sunk in indolence, whose chief business was to 
bow and rob at the Castle. The only spiritual function, he says, 
which they performed was ordination; and when he saw what 
persons they ordained, he doubted whether it would not be better 
that they should neglect that function as they neglected every 
other. Those, Sir, are now living who can well remember how 
the revenues of the richest see in Ireland were squandered on the 
shores of the Mediterranean by a bishop, whose epistles, very 
different compositions from the epistles of St. Peter and St. John, 
may be found in the correspondence of Lady Hamilton. Such 
abuses as these called forth no complaint, no reprimand. And all 
this time the true pastors of the people — meanly fed and meanly 
clothed, frowned upon by the law, exposed to the insults of every 
petty squire who gloried in the name of Protestant, were to be 
found in miserable cabins, amidst filth, and famine, and contagion, 
instructing the young, consoling the miserable, holding up the 
crucifix before the eyes of the dying. Is it strange that, under 
such circumstances, the Roman Catholic religion should have been 
constantly becoming dearer and dearer to an ardent and sensitive 
people, and that your Established Church should have been 
constantly sinking lower and lower in their estimation ? 1 do not 
of course hold the living clergy of the Irish Church answerable for 
the faults of their predecessors, God forbid ! To do sb .would te 



MAYttOOtll COLLEGE GRANT. 283 

the most flagitious injustice. I know tliai a salutary change has 
taken place. I" have no reason to doubt that in learning and 
regularity of life the Protestant clergy of Ireland are on a level 
with the clergy of England. But in the way of making proselytes 
they do as little as those who preceded them. An enmity of 300 
years separates the nation from those who should be its teacher?. 
In short, it is plain that the mind of Ireland has taken its ply, and 
is not to be bent in a different direction, or, at all events, is not to 
be so bent by your present machinery. Well, then, this Church 
is inefficient as a missionary Church. But there is yet another 
end which, in the opinion of some eminent men, a church is meant 
to serve. That end has been often in the minds of practical politi- 
cians. But the first speculative politician who distinctly pointed it 
out was Mr. Hume. Mr. Hume, as might have been expected from 
his known opinions, treated the question merely as it related to 
the temporal happiness of mankind ; and, perhaps, it may be 
doubted whether he took quite a just view of the manner in 
which even the temporal happiness of mankind is affected by the 
restraints and consolations of religion. He reasoned thus: — It is 
dangerous to the peace of society that the public mind should be 
violently excited on religious subjects. If you adopt the voluntary 
system, the public mind will always be so excited. For every 
preacher, knowing that his bread depends on his popularity, 
seasons his doctrine high, and practises every art for the purpose 
of obtaining an ascendency over ii,^ hearers. But when the 
Government pays the minister of religion, he ha* no pressing 
motive to inflame the zeal of his congregation. He will probably 
go through his duties in a somewhat perfunctory manner. His 
power will not be very formidable ; and such as it is, it will be 
employed in support of that order of things under which he firds 
himself so comfortable. Now, Sir, it is not necessary to inquire 
whether Mr. Hume's doctrire be sound or unsound. For, sound 
or unsound, it furnishes nc ground on which jou can rest the 



2§4 MAVNOOTII COLLEGE GRANT. 

defence- of the institution which we are now considering, tt is 
evident that by establishing in Ireland the Church of the minority 
in connexion with the State, you have produced, in the very 
highest degree, all those evils which Mr. Hume considered as 
inseparable from the voluntary system. You may go all over the 
world without finding another country where religious differences 
take a form so dangerous to the peace of society ; where the 
common people are so much under the influence of their priests; 
or where the priests who teach the common people are so com- 
pletely estranged from the civil Government. And now, Sir, T will 
sum up what I have said. For what end does the Church of 
Ireland exist? Is that end the instruction and solace of the great 
body of the people ? You must admit that the Church of Ireland 
has not attained that end ? Is the end which you have in view 
the conversion of the great body of the people from the Roman 
Catholic religion to a purer form of Christianity ? You must 
admit that the Church of Ireland has not attained that end. Oi 
do you propose to yourselves the end contemplated by Mr. Hume, 
the peace and security of civil society ? You must admit that the 
Church of Ireland has not attained that end. In the name of 
common sense, then, tell us what good end this Church has 
attained ; or suffer us to conclude, as I am forced to conclude, that 
it is emphatically a bad institution. It does not, I know, neces- 
sarily follow that, because an institution is bad, it is therefore to be 
immediately destroyed. Sometimes a bad institution takes a 
strong hold on the hearts of mankind, intertwines its roots with 
the very foundations of society, and is not to be removed without 
serious peril to order, law, and property. For example, I hold 
polygamy to be one of the most pernicious practices that exist in 
the world. But if the Legislative Council of India were to pass 
an Act prohibiting polygamy, I should think that they were out 
of their senses. Such a measure would bring down the vast fabric 
of your Indian Empire with one crash. But is there any similar 



MAVNOOtH COLLEGE GRANT. 285 

reason for dealing tenderly with the Established Church of 
Ireland? That Church, Sir, is not one of those bad institutions 
which ought to be spared because they are popular, and because 
their fall would injure good institutions. It is, on the contrary, 
so odious, and its vicinage so much endangers valuable parts of 
our polity, that even if it were in itself a good institution, there 
would be strong reasons for giving it up. The hon. Gentleman 
who spoke last told us that we cannot touch this Church without 
endangering the Legislative Union. Sir, I have given my best 
attention to this important point ; and have arrived at a very 
different conclusion. The question to be determined is this — 
What is the best way of preserving political union between 
countries in which different religions prevail ? With respect to 
this question we have, I think, all the light which history can give 
us. There is no sort of experiment described by Lord Bacon 
which we have not tried. Inductive philosophy is of no value if 
we cannot trust to the lessons derived from the experience of 
more than 200 years. England has long been closely connected 
with two countries less powerful than herself, and differing from 
herself in religion. The Scottish people are Presbyterians ; the 
Irish people are Roman Catholics. We determined to force the 
Anglican svstcin on both countries. In both countries great 
discontent was the result. At length Scotland rebelled. Then 
Ireland rebelled. The Scotch and Irish rebellions, taking place at 
a time when the public mind of England was greatly and justly 
excited, produced the Great Rebellion here, and the downfall of 
the Monarchy, of the Church, and of the Aristocracy. After the 
Restoration we again tried the old system. During twenty-eight 
years we persisted in the attempt to force Prelacy on the Scotch ; 
and the consequence was, during those twenty-eight years Scot- 
land exhibited a frightful spectacle of misery and depravity. The 
history of that period is made up of oppression and resistance, of 
insuiieutions, barbarous punishments, and assassinations. One 



286 Maynooth college: GftAtf*. 

Jay a crowd of zealous rustics stand desperately on their defence, 
and repel the dragoons. Next day the dragoons scatter and hew 
down the flying peasantry. One day the knee-bones of a wretched 
Covenanter are beaten flat in that accursed boot. Next day the 
Lord Primate is dragged out of his carriage by a band of raving 
fanatics, and, while screaming for riiercy, is butchered at the feet 
of his own daughter. So things went on, till at last we remem- 
bered that institutions are made for men, and not men for 
institutions. A wise Government desisted from the vain attempt 
to maintain an episcopal Establishment in a Presbyterian nation. 
From that moment the connexion between England and Scotland 
became every year closer and closer. There were still, it is true, 
many causes of animosity. There was an old antipathy between 
the nations, the effect of many blows given and received on both 
sides'. All the greatest calamities that had befallen Scotland had 
been inflicted by England. The proudest events in Scottish history 
were victories obtained over England. Yet all angry feelings 
died rapidly away. The union of the nations became complete. 
The oldest man living does not remember to have heard any 
demagogue breathe a wish for separation. Do yon believe that 
this would have happened if England had, after the Revolution, 
persisted in attempting to force the surplice and the Prayer Book 
on the Scotch? I tell you that if you had adhered to the mad 
scheme of producing a religious union with Scotland, you never 
would have had a cordial political union with her. At this very 
day you would have had monster meetings on the north of the 
Tweed, and another Conciliation Hall, and another repeal button, 
with the motto " Nemo me impune lacessit." In fact, England 
never would have become the great power that she is. For 
Scotland would have been, not an addition to the effective strength 
of the Empire, but a deduction from it. As often as then* was a 
war with France or Spain, there would have been an insurrection 
in Scotland. Our country would have sunk into a kingdoi: of the 



MAYNOOTH C >'.LEQE GRANT. 287 

second class. One sucb Church ju that about which we are now 
debating is a serious eneumbranci to the greatest empire. Two 
such Churches no empire could bear. You continued to govern 
Ireland during many generations as yoa had governed Scotland 
in the days of Lauderdale and D.mdee. And see the results. 
Ireland has remained, indeed, a pait of your Empire. But you 
know her to be a source of weakness rathci than of strength. 
Her misery is a reproach to you. Her discontent doubles the 
dangers of war. Can you, with such facts before you, doubt 
about the course which you ought to take? Imaghc a physician 
with two patients, both afflicted with the same disease. lie 
applies the same sharp remedies to both. Both becoLYis worse and 
worse with the same inflammatory symptoms. Then he changes 
his treatment of one case, and gives cordnls. The sufferer revives, 
grows better day by day, and is at length restored to perfect 
health. The other patient is still subjected to the old treatment, 
and becomes constantly more and more disordered. Hovv would 
a physician act in such a case ? And are AOt the principles of 
experimental philosophy the same in polit^ca as in medicine! 
Therefore, Sir, I am fully prepared to take strong measures with 
regard to the Established Church of Ireland. 7t is not necessary 
for me to say precisely how far I would go. I m\ aware that it 
may be necessary in this, as in other cases, to C0L<\ent to a com- 
promise. But the more complete the reform ^hich may be 
proposed, provided always that vested rights be, A3 I am sure 
they will be, held strictly sacred, the more cordially shall I 
support it. That some reform is at hand I cannot doubt. In a 
very short time we shall see the evils which I have described 
mitigated, if not entirely removed. A Liberal Administration 
would make this concession to Ireland from a sense of justice. A 
Conservative Administration will make it from a sense of danger. 
The right hon. Baronet has given the Irish a lesson which will 
bear fruit, It is a lesson which rulers ought to be slow to teachj 



288 MAYNOOTH COLLEGE GRANT. 

for it is one which nations are not slow to learn. We hav\ repeat 
edly been told by acts— we arc now told almost in express words 
— that agitation and intimidation are the means which ought to 
be employed by those who wish for redress of grievances from the 
party now in power. Such, indeed, has too long been the policy 
of England towards Ireland ; but it was surely never before 
avowed with such indiscreet frankness. Every epoch which is re- 
membered with pleasure on the other side of St. George's Channel, 
coincides with some epoch which we here consider as disastrous 
and perilous. To the American war and the volunteers the Irish 
Parliament owes its independence. To the French revolutionary 
war the Irish Roman Catholics owed the elective franchise. It 
was in vain that all the great orators and statesmen of two gene- 
rations exerted themselves to remove the Roman Catholic disa- 
bilities — Burke, Fox, Pitt, Windham, Grenville, Grey, Plunkett, 
Wellesley, Grattan, Canning, Wilberforcc — argument and expos- 
tulation were fruitless. At length pressure of a stronger kind 
was boldly and skilfully applied ; and soon all difficulties gave 
way. The Catholic Association — the Clare election — the dread 
of civil war, produced the Emancipation Act. Again, the cry of 
No Popery was raised. That cry succeeded. A faction which 
had reviled in the bitterest terms the mild administration of Whig 
Viceroys, and which was pledged to the -wholesale disfranchise- 
ment of the Roman Catholics, rose to power. One leading 
member of that faction had drawn forth loud cheers by de- 
claiming against the minions of Popery. Another had designated 
6,000,000 of Irish Catholics as aliens. A third had publicly 
declared his conviction, that a time was at hand when all 
Protestants of every persuasion would find it necessary to combine 
firmh against the encroachments of Romanism. From such men 
we expected nothing but oppression and intolerance. We are 
agreeably disappointed to find that a series of conciliatory measures 
4s brought before us. But, in the midst of our delight, we cannot 



MAYNOOrU COLLEGE GRANT. 289 

refrain from asking for some explanation of so extraordinary a 
change. We are told in reply, that the monster meetings of 1843 
were very formidable, and that our relations with America are in 
a very unsatisfactory state. The public opinions of Ireland arc to 
be consulted — the religion of Ireland is to be treated with respect, 
not because equity and humanity plainly enjoin that course — for 
equity and humanity enjoined that course as plainly when you 
were calumniating Lord Normanby, and hurrying forward your 
Registration Bill ; but because Mr. O'Connell and Mr. Polk have 
between them made you very uneasy. Sir, it is with shame, with 
sorrow, and, I will add, with dismay, that I listen to such 
language. I have hitherto disapproved of the monster meetings 
of 1843. I have disapproved of the way in which Mr. O'Connell 
and some other Irish Representatives have seceded from this 
House. I should not- have chosen to apply to those Gentlemen 
the precise words which were used on a former occasion by the 
lion, and learned Member for Bath. But I agreed with him in 
substance, I thought it highly to the honour of my right lion. 
Friend the Member for Dungarvon, and of my hon. Friends the 
Members for Kildare, for Roscommon, and for the city of Water- 
ford, that they had the moral courage to attend the service of 
this House, and to give us the very valuable assistance which they 
are, in various ways, so well qualified tn atford. But what am I 
to say now ? How can I any longer deny that the place where 
an Irish Gentleman may best serve his country is Conciliation 
Hall ? How can I expect that any Irish Roman Catholic can be 
very sorry to learn that our foreign relations are in an alarming 
state, or can rejoice to hear that all danger of war his blown 
over ? I appeal to the Conservative Members of this House. I 
ask them whither we are hastening? I ask them what it» to be 
the end of a policy of which it is the principle to give nothing to 
justice, and everything to fear? We have been accused of 
truckling to Irish agitators. But I defy you to show us that *- 
VQh U, 13 



290 MAYNOOTIl COLLEGE GRANT. 

ever made or are now making to Ireland a single con sssion 
which was not in strict conformity with our known principles. 
You may therefore trust us, when we tell you that there is a point 
where we will stop. Our language to the Irish is this : — " You 
asked for emancipation : it was agreeable to our principles that 
you should have it; and we assisted you to obtain it. You 
wished for a municipal system, as popular as that which exists in 
England : we thought your wish reasonable, and did all in our 
power to gratify it. This grant to Maynooth is, in our opinion, 
proper ; and we will do our best to obtain it for you, though it 
should cost us our popularity and our seats in Parliament. The 
Established Church in your island, as now constituted, is a griev- 
ance of which you justly complain. We will strive to redress 
that grievance. The Repeal of the Union we regard as fatal to 
the Empire : and we never will consent to it ; never, though the 
country should be surrounded by dangers as great as those whict 
threatened her when her American Colonies, and France, and 
Spain, and Holland, were leagued against her, and when the 
armed neutrality of the Baltic disputed her maritime rights ; never, 
though another Bonaparte should pitch his camp in sight of Dovei 
Castle ; never, till all has been staked and lost ; never, till the foui 
quarters of the world have been convulsed by the last struggle of 
the great English people for their place among the nations." 
This, Sir, is the true policy. When you give, give frankly. When 
you withhold, withhold resolutely. Then what you give is re- 
ceived with gratitude ; and, as for what you withhold, men, seeing 
that to wrest it from you is no safe or easy enterprise, cease to 
hope for it, and, in time, cease to wish for it. But there is a way 
of so withholding as merely to excite desire, and of so giving as 
merely to excite contempt; and that way the present Ministry 
has discovered. Is it possible for me to doubt that in a few 
months the same machinery which extorted the Emancipation 
Act,. and which has extorted the Bill before us, will again be put 



MaVnootii college grant. 291 

in motion. Who shall say what will he the next sacrifice ? For 
my own part I firmly believe that, if the present Ministers remain 
in power five years longer, and if we should have — which God 
avert! — a war with France or America, the Established Church of 
Ireland will be given up. The right hon. Baronet will come 
down to make a proposition conceived in the very spirit of the 
Motions which have repeatedly been made by my hon. Friend the 
Member for Sheffield. He will again be deserted by his followers; 
he will again be dragged through his difficulties by his opponents. 
Some honest Lord of the Treasury may determine to quit his 
office rather than belie all the professions of a life. But there will 
be little difficulty in finding a successor ready to change all his 
opinions at twelve hours' warning. I may, perhaps, while cor- 
dially supporting the Bill, again venture to say something about 
consistency, and about the importance of maintaining a high 
standard of political morality. The right hon. Baronet will again 
tell me, that he is anxious only for the success of his measure, and 
that he does not choose to reply to taunts. And the right hon. 
Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer will produce Hansard, 
will read to the House my speech of this night, and will most 
logically argue that I ought not to reproach the Ministers with 
their inconsistency ; seeing that I had, from my knowledge of 
their temper and principles, predicted to a tittle the nature and 
extent of that inconsistency. Sir, I have thought it my duty to 
brand with strong terms of reprehension the practice of conceding 
in time of public danger, what is obstinately withheld in time of 
public security. I am prepared, and have long been prepared, to 
grant much, very much, to Ireland. But if the Repeal Association 
were to dissolve itself to-morrow — and if the next steamer were to 
orinor news that all our differences with the United States were 
adjusted in the most honourable and friendly manner — I would 
grant to Ireland neither more nor less than I would grant if we 
were on the eve of a rebellion like that of 1798; if war werti 



'JO'J MAYNOOtft COLLEGE GRANT. 

raging all along the Canadian frontier; and if thirty French sa? 
of the line were confronting our fleet in St. George's Channel. 1 
give my vote from my heart and soul for the Amendment of my 
hon Friend. He calls on us to make to Ireland a concession, which 
ought in justice to have been made long ago, and which may be 
made with grace and dignity even now. I well know that you will 
refuse to make it now. I know as well, that vou will make it 
hereafter. You will make it as every concession to Ireland has 
been made. You will make it when its effect will be not to 
appease, but to stimulate agitation. You will make it when it 
will be regarded, not as a great act of national justice, but as a con- 
fession of national weakness. You will make it in such a way, 
and at such a time, that there will be but too much reason to 
doubt whether more mischief has been done by vour long refusal, 
or by your tardy and enforced compliance. 



UNIVERSITIES (SCOTLAND) BILL.* 

july 9, 1815. 

I have been requested by my right hon. and learned Friend the 
Member for Leith (Mr. Rutherford), to act as bis substitute on this 
occasion (tLe moving of the Second Reading). 1 very greatly 
regret that a substitute should be necessary. I regret that we 
have not him amongst us to take charge of this measure, which he 
introduced to a very thin House indeed, in one of the most forcible 
and luminous speeches it has ever been my lot to hear. The few 
hon. Members, however, who were then present, cannot fail to 
remember the powerful effect which the speech of my hon. and 
learned Friend, on applying for leave to bring in the Bill, 
produced. The Ministers who came down to oppose it relin- 
quished their objections to it. They hesitated ; they consulted 
together ; and at last, under the irresistible influence of his elo- 
quence, they consented that he should have leave to bring in 
the Bill. They subsequently appeared to regard the Bill with 
favour, and his hon. and learned Friend, with himself, was thus 
induced to expect that the opposition to it was over. We antici- 
pated that this important and salutary measure would be suffered 
to become law. But we have been disappointed. It has been 
intimated to us that it is the intention of Her Majesty's Govern- 
ment to resist the further progress of the measure ; and under 
these circumstances I now rise to move the Second Reading of the 
Bib. Were this an ordinary occasion, I should, under such cir- 

» Hansard, 3d Series, vol. Ixxxii. p. 227-^42- 



'2 ( J4 UNIVERSITIES (SCOTLAND) BILL. 

cumstances, despair of success ; but when I consider the strength 
of our cause, and recollect the justice aud necessity on which it is 
founded, I cannot think it possible that even the opposition of Iler 
Majesty's Government could succeed against it. I should con- 
sider success not only possible, but certain, if I did not know how 
imperfectly most English Gentlemen are informed on subjects imme- 
diaiely connected with Scotland. It is on this account that, 
departing from the ordinary course, I think it necessary, even after 
the able and eloquent statement of my hon. and learned Friend in 
introducing the measure, to address the House, instead of simply 
moving the second reading of this Bill ; and in doing so I shall 
beg the attention of the English Gentlemen present to the state 
of Scotland. I hope that they will think that on this occasion 
the Member for Edinburgh has some right to their indulgence. I 
have been sent to this House as the Representative of a great city, 
which was once the capital of an independent kingdom — once the 
seat of a Court and of a Parliament ; and, though for the general 
good it descended from that eminence, it still continues the intel- 
lectual metropolis of a great and intelligent people. Their chief 
distinction of late years has been derived from their University, 
which wus practically constituted on the pure principles of tolera- 
tion now advocated by Her Majesty's Ministers. So constituted, it 
has flourished during several generations, a blessing to the Empire, 
and renowned, to the furthest ends of the world, as a great school 
of physical and moral science. This noble and beneficent institu- 
tion is now threatened with a complete and ignominious alteration 
in its character by the shortsighted and criminal policy of Her 
Majesty's Government, and by the virulence of ecclesiastical fac- 
tion, which is bent on persecution, without even the miserable 
excuse of fanaticism. Nor is it only Edinburgh that is threatened. 
In pleading for it, I plead for all the great academic institutions of 
Scotland. The fate of all depends on the discussion of this night ; 
ancjj while pleading for thern ? I am confident tat I shall be heard 



tttfivifiRSiTiEs (scotland) bill. 2§o 

with favour by every one who loves learning and religions liberty. 
I shall now proceed, therefore, without further preface, to the con- 
sideration of the Bill before the House. I say, first, that this Bill 
is founded on a sound principle. I say, secondly, that even if the 
principle of this Bill were not one which could be defended as 
generally sound, still the principles of the Ministers should make 
them desirous of passing the Bill ; and, thirdly, I say, that if the 
Bill ought to pass, it ought not to be delayed by the Government. 
I state, first, that the principle of this Bill is a sound principle ; and 
whoever else may undertake to controvert that assertion, by Her 
Majesty's Ministers, at least, it cannot be controverted. From 
their mouth a declaration will not sound well, that literary and 
scientific instruction is inseparably connected with spiritual instruc- 
tion. It will not do for them to rail against the principle of this 
Bill as establishing "a godless system of education;" or to talk 
witli horror of the danger of young men listening to lectures 
delivered by an Arian professor of botany, or a Popish professor 
of chemistry. They have contended that those sciences can be 
taught withont reference to a religious creed. They have, for a 
country in which a great proportion of those who require acade- 
mical education are dissenters from the Established Church, advo- 
cated a system of academical education altogether separate from 
religious tests. In that case they have thrown open the professor- 
ships to every creed ; and they have strenuously defended this 
principle against attacks from opposite quarters — against the 
attacks of zealous members of the Church of England, and of the 
prelates of the Church of Rome. A test was offered only the day 
before yesterday for* their acceptance by the hon. Baronet the 
Member for North Devon (Sir T. Acland), a test singularly mode- 
rate, merely requiring the professors to declare their belief in the 
divine authority of the Old and New Testaments ; and even this 
test the Ministers resisted as inconsistent with the principles of 
their measure. Tt was then argued that it was unnecessary to 



§6 universities (Scotland) bill. 

apply such a test to professors of secular science ; that it was uq 
worthy to insinuate that they would inculcate infidelity on theii 
pupils ; and all men must remember with what scorn the Minis- 
ters discarded the notion that science could not be taught except 
in conjunction with a religious creed. The right hon. Gentleman 
at the head of the Government said that it was utterly impossible 
to suppose that the professors would stoop to conduct anything so 
degrading, and abuse the confidence reposed in them. We heard 
in other quarters the use of very different language ; but that 
language made as little impression on Ministers as on me. We 
were told that secular knowledge, unsanctioned and unaccom- 
panied by sound views of pure religion, was not merely useless, 
but was positively noxious — that it was not a blessing but a curse. 
I respect most deeply some of those who used that language ; but 
it appears to me that this proposition is one which, while you state 
it in merely general terms, may possibly have a pleasing sound to 
the ears of some persons, but which, when brought to a test by 
applying it to the real concerns of life, is so monstrous and ludi- 
crous that refutation is out of the question. Is it seriously meant, 
that if the captain of an Indiaman should be a Socinian, it would 
be better that he should not know the science of navigation ; and 
that if a druggist should be a Swedenborgian, it would be better 
that he did not know the difference between Epsom salts and 
oxalic acid ? Is it seriously meant, that 100,000,000 of the Queen's 
subjects, being Mahomedans and Hindoos, and progressing towards 
our state of civilization, should be sunk below the aborigines of 
New South Wales, without an alphabet, and without the rudi- 
ments of arithmetic ? Gentlemen who mean seriously that secular 
knowledge, unsanctioned by a pure system of religion, is a positive 
evil, must go that length ; but I should think that no sane man 
would be found to do that. At least, I never could conceive how an 
error in geology or astronomy couid be corrected by divinity, or 
how a man well acquainted with his Bible could be saved from 



uKiVERStTifis (scotland) ntLt. <J9? 

scientific errors. On these grounds, T cordially supported tlie mea- 
sure wliich her Majesty's Government introduced with respect to 
the Irish Colleges. The principle of the Irish Colleges Bill, and 
the principle of the Bill the second reading of wliich I now move, 
are the same ; and the House and ihe country have a right to know 
why those who bring in the Irish Colleges Bill call on us to throw 
out the present Bill. It is most true, that in Scotland there is no 
clamour against the English connexion. It is true, that in Scot- 
land there is no demagogue who thinks to obtain popular favour 
by attempting to excite animosity against men of the English race : 
and it is true, that in Scotland there is no party who would ven- 
ture to speak of the enemies of the State as possible to be, under 
any circumstances, the allies of Scotland. In every extremity the 
Scotch people will be found faithful to the common cause of the 
Empire ; but it will not, I hope, be thought — I am sine that, at 
any rate, it will not be publicly avowed — that on this account a 
measure bestowed as a boon on another part of the Empire, ought 
to be withheld from Scotland. But if this is not the distinction, 
where are we to look for a distinction ? In Scotland, as well as in 
Ireland, unhappily, the Established Church is the church of the 
minority of the population. It is peifectly true, that the propor- 
tion of Dissenters to the Established Church in Scotland is not so 
great as in Ireland ; but we cannot say that on this occasion we are 
dealing with the whole of the population. The question concerns 
that class which requires academical education ; and among that 
class in Scotland the proportion of Dissenters from the Esta- 
blished Church, it would not be very difficult to show, is as great as 
the proportion of Roman Catholics among a similar class in Ireland. 
If it is desirable that there should be no sectarian education in 
Ireland, it is no less desirable in Scotland. If it is desirable that 
Protestants and Catholics should study together at Cork, it is no 
less desirable that the sons of elders of the Established Church of 
Scotland, and the sons of those who are separated from that Church, 

13- 



8 ttttlV-EftSlTtES (SCOTLAND) B1I.L. 

should study together at Edinburgh. If it is not desirable to require 
from Irish professors a declaration that they believe in the divine 
authority of the Gospels, on what ground is it necessary to call 
on the Scotch professors to say that they resent to every clause in 
the Confession of Faith ? I defy right hon. Gentlemen opposite, 
with all their ingenuity and eloquence, to find one argument or 
rhetorical topic bearing against this Bill, which would not be as 
effectual against their own Irish Colleges Bill. I consider this Bill, 
then, as safe from attack, with respect to its principle, from Her 
Majesty's Ministers. But I go further ; and I say that, even if I 
did not hold the principle of this Bill to be most sound and 
excellent, I could still show, in the peculiar case of Scotland, some 
irresistible reasons for adopting the Bill, and for inducing many 
who even voted against the Irish Colleges Bill, to vote in favour 
of the present Bill. In the first place, I would call attention to 
the peculiar character of academical institutions in Scotland. The 
case of Scotland differs widely from the case of England and 
from the case of Ireland. The English Universities have a cha- 
racter of their own — an ancient, deeply marked character. It may 
be good, or may be bad ; that question I will not now argue ; but 
this we must acknowledge, that it is in perfect harmony with the 
system of tests. The Irish Colleges have no character. They 
have Jo receive their character from the Legislature, and we may 
impress on them what character we please. If we think it desira- 
ble to give them a character not in harmony with the system of 
tests, we may do so. But the Scotch Universities have a distinct 
character, as strongly marked as that of the English institutions, 
and altogether out of harmony with the system of tests. I entreat 
English Gentlemen not to suppose that the system of discipline or 
mode of instruction in them is like that in the English Universities, 
or that there are such authorities in them as the Provost of King's 
College is, or the Warden of New College. This is a distinct 
question from anything connected with the English Universities, 



UNIVERSITIES (SCOTLAND) BILL. 299 

and is to be decided on different grounds. We are not introducing 
a precedent for allowing dissenters to be professors at Oxford and 
Cambridge. There is, in fact, no analogy whatever between the 
Universities of the two countries. What ought to be done with 
respect to the English Universities is a perfectly distinct question, 
and to be dealt with on perfectly distinct grounds. The object of 
the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford is, to bring up young 
men in connexion with a particular Church. At Cambridge, no 
person is suffered to graduate without declaring his adhesion to 
that Church. The rule at Oxford is even more strict ; for on ma- 
triculation a declaration on oath must be made. The discipline, 
even outside the walls of the Colleges, is analogous to that pursued 
within. The students are lodged in the Colleges, and are obliged 
to attend to the strictest regulations with regard to their conduct, 
and to attend constantly in chapel and in hall. A person is 
appointed in each College to note the absence of the young men 
from divine service, another to watch their absence from hall, and 
another to keep account of those who return to the College at late 
hours ; and University officers parade the streets by night, as a sort 
of University police, to seize upon any students they may find 
beyond the walls of their respective Colleges. In these Universi- 
ties, there are punishments for any breach of decorum, and the 
authorities of the University have the power of control over the 
conduct of the pupils. The Scotch Universities are of a different 
nature. They do not pretend to inculcate one form of religious 
opinion more than another ; a Jew might become a Master of 
Arts or a Doctor of Medicine as readily as a member of the Church 
of Scotland. No academical authority has a right to ask a young 
man attending the University whether he went to the Synagogue or 
the Catholic chapel, to the Free Church or the Established Church. 
As to the moral conduct of the young men beyond the walla 
of the University, no influence could be exercised, and none of the 
Jjeaxjs of it could interfere with a student for conduct in the street 



300 UNIVERSITIES (SCOTLAND) BILL. 

of Edinburgh. The proceedings in Edinburgh were similar to 
branches of scientific education in London. A young man might 
attend lectures at St. George's Hospital, or the Lectures of Mr. 
Faraday in Albemarle Street, to learn chemistry, and of Mr. Car- 
lyle on German literature, without any interference on the part of 
his instructors beyond the lecture room. Would it not be absurd 
to require a religious test from the lecturers to medical students at 
St. George's Hospital, at Surgeons' Hall, or in other places where 
science was taught ? The relation between those parties being 
<xactlv analogous to the relation existing between the Scotch pro- 
fessors and Scotch students, on wbat principle can we defend the 
requiring of religious tests from the Scotch professors ? If I held 
all the opinions of those Gentlemen who most dislike the Scotch 
system, I should say, after all, that in such a system religious tests 
would be out of place. Where you aim at bringing up young 
men as members of a particular Church, there is a reason for 
requiring from all who educate, a test to show that they belong 
to that Church ; but where you do not propose to inculcate certain 
religious opinions, it is absurd to require that men should be Pro- 
testants before they give lectures on chemistry, or Trinitarians 
before they can take medical degrees I therefore say, that the 
peculiar character of the Scotch Universities is, in my opinion, one 
strong reason to agree to this Bill. The peculiar engagements 
which exist between the English and Scottish nations also appear 
to me a strong reason for adopting the Bill. Some Gentlemen 
may think that I am venturing on dangerous ground. We have 
heard that the Treaty of Union and the Act of Security require 
us to prevent the passing of such a measure. I say that by those 
Acts I am not bound to throw this measure out ; but that I am 
bound to adopt it, or some measure to the same eft'ect ; and this 
I undertake to prove by irresistible arguments. I shall resort to 
no paltry quibbling with the view of explaining away words. I 
^tterlv repudiate such an attempt when made in reference to que* 



UNIVERSITIES (SCOTLAND) BILL. 301 

tions like this. If I thought that the public exigencies required 
us to break through the Treaty of Union, I would say so openly, 
and should never quibble at words. I mean to deal with th« 
Treaty of Union as a solemn engagement. In what sense was 
that treaty adopted by the contracting parties ; and more espe- 
cially, in what sense was it understood by that party which, if there 
is any doubt, ought to prevail, that party being the weaker party, 
and standing in need of a guarantee ? It was declared by that 
Treaty that no person should be a teacher or office-bearer at the 
Universities who did not subscribe to the Confession of Faith ; or, 
in other words, did not declare his adhesion to the Established 
Church. What Established Church was that ? It was the Church 
established in 170*7, when the Union was adopted. Is the Church 
of Scotland, at the present moment, on all points constituted as 
that Church was in 1707 ? I answer, certainly not. The British 
Legislature violated the Articles of the Union, and made a change 
in the constitution of the Church of Scotland. From that change 
has tlowed almost all the dissent now existing in Scotland ; and if 
you attempt to enforce the letter of the Articles of the Act of 
Union against the Dissenters, you are actually excluding from 
acting as officers of the Universities precisely those persons to 
whom the Act of Union meant to give the exclusive possession of 
the academic offices. This I undertake to prove. Every person 
who knows anything of the ecclesiastical history of Scotland must 
be aware that in the opinion of the great body of Scotch Presby- 
terians, the mode in which pastors are appointed is a matter of 
great importance. From the time of the Reformation the great 
body of Scotch Presbyterians held that in some form or other the 
people ought to have a share in the appointment of their Minis- 
ters. They do not consider this as a thing indifferent ; they con- 
sider it as a matter jure divino, for they think that according to 
the revealed word of God, no individuals are entitled to be minis- 
ters to congregations if their preaching does not tend to edify the 



302 UNIVERSITIES (SCOTLAND) DILL. 

congregations. I am sure that I do not exaggerate when I say tha< 
members of the Church of England do noc attach more import 
ance to their ecclesiastical government and ordination, than many 
Scotchmen who fear God and honour their Queen, attach to this 
right of a popular voice in the choice of their spiritual ministers. 
What was the state of the Church of Scotland as constituted in 
17C7 ? It was constituted in a manner satisfactory to the great 
part of the Presbyterian body. In 1690, the Act was passed for 
the regulation of the presbyteries, and giving to popular bodies a 
share in the election of the ministers, which then was considered 
an essential principle of the Church of that country. The Church 
of Scotland was so constituted when England entered into the 
solemn engagement with Scotland, by which the two countries 
were united, and in which it was declared that the then form of 
the Church should remain and continue unalterable. But five 
years after the Union there was a violation of this Article of the 
Union — a violation, the consequences of which I never think upon 
without regarding them as one of the most solemn warnings his- 
tory presents to States, always to keep public faith strictly invio- 
late — and without a conviction, that in the end, though long 
periods, though whole generations may elapse, retribution for the 
injustice will come. In the year 1V12, it is well known how the 
country was governed : the Whigs, who were the chief authors of 
the Union, who had carried on the war with Louis XIV., had been 
driven from power ; they had fallen in consequence of the prose- 
cution of Dr. Sacheverell, and the enmity of the Church of Eng- 
land. A Tory ministry was in ofnee — brought in and kept in by 
the Tory country gentlemen. The heads of that Ministry, but 
still more its followers, regarded the Presbyterians of Scotland 
with great dislike ; that was a feeling which persons acquainted 
with the writings of Swift would know existed at that time. The 
general feeling was, that the English nation and the English 
Qluirch hac] made a bad bargain, of which thev were desirous to get 



CKtVERfiiriEs (scotlakd) bill. 303 

rid, and which, as far as tliey possibly could, without risking th« 
general safety of the State, they ought to violate. During their 
short period of power they did offer numerous petty insults to the 
opinions, or, if you please, the prejudices of the Presbyterians ; 
but the chief act on which they ventured was the introduction of 
a Bill abolishing the law of 1690, and giving back the power of 
filling up vacant benefices to lay patrons. Of the history of that 
Bill we have a little in Burnet, and we have something verv siVni- 
ficant in our own Journals. The measure was hurried on with the 
greatest speed, that it might be got through the House before inti- 
mation of it could reach Scotland ; for those were not the days of 
railroads, when a speech made at two or three o'clock in the morning, 
is read the same day at Exeter and Newcastle. The significant entry 
on our Journals respecting it is this — there was an obstinate fight, 
and in the debate on the third reading, it was ordered that the Act 
of Union and the Act of Security should be read to trie House. 
This is a pretty clear indication of what the feeling was on that 
occasion. But the Bill got up to the House of Lords ; then came 
a petition from the General Assembly of Scotland against it. The 
first name attached to the petition was that of Carstairs, an emi- 
nent man, who had enjoyed the confidence of William III., and 
well known for the share he took in the establishment of the 
Church of Scotland after the Revolution. In that petition, their 
Lordships were prayed not to violate the Act of Union ; but party 
spirit ran high, and bore down ail opposition ; the Act of Union 
was violated ; year after year the General Assembly protested 
against the violation, but in vain ; and from the Act of 1712, 
undoubtedly flowed every secession and schism that has taken 
place in the Church of Scotland. It is true that the Act being 
upon the Statute Book was not a necessary reason that men should 
secede from the Church ; but as often as it was put in execution, 
so often the Act of Union was violated again ; as often as the 
subject was agitated by the operation of the Bill, so often these 



304 universities (scotland) b*ll. 

secessions tooK place. It is not my intention to detain the House 
with the minute history of these separations, but in consequence 
of the operation of the Act, the seceding Ministers formed the 
Associate Presbytery ; and in 1*752, the Relief Church was esta- 
blished. Even in our own time we have had similar instances ; 
only two years ago we saw, not perhaps with unmixed approba- 
tion, but with strong sentiments of admiration, 470 ministers 
leaving their parishes and manses, throwing up their stipends, and 
committing themselves, their wives and children, to the care of Pro- 
vidence in this cause. Their congregations adhered to them firmly, 
followed them in crowds, and, surrounded by willing and delighted 
hearers, they preached in other churches, or, if none could be 
obtained, in tents and barns, or on those hills and moors to which 
in other times their ancestors fled, and worshipped God in despite 
of Lauderdale and Dundee. They were supported by their con- 
gregations, and the spirit in which every one contributed resembled 
that in which the widow of old threw her mite into the treasury 
at Jerusalem. Through whole districts, in whole counties, on the 
other hand, the ministers of the Establishment were preaching to 
empty walls. This was the fruit of the Act of 1712 ; from the 
Act of 1712, sprang the disputes which led to these distinct and 
repeated secessions. The repeal of that Act, and a return to the 
constitution of the Church of Scotland as it existed at the time of 
the Union, would have sufficed to heal the wound that had been 
inflicted. This is the true history of dissent in Scotland, and, 
knowing it, can any English statesman have the front to invoke 
the Treaty of Union and the Act of Security against those who hold 
those precise opinions which the Treaty of Union and the Act of 
Security were intended to protect, and who are Dissenters only 
because that Treaty and that Act have been violated ? I 
implore the Gentlemen of England to think over the manner in 
which England has acted towards the Presbyterians of Scotland. 
First, by a solemn Treaty with the people of Scotland, you bound 



universities (scotland) bill. 30a 

yourselves to maintain inviolate the constitution of their Church 
as it then existed ; and five years afterwards you changed the 
constitution of that Church in a point which the people of Scot- 
land regarded as essential ; in consequence of which, secession 
after secession takes place, one great body of worshippers after 
another leaves the Church till the Establishment is reduced to the 
Church of the minorit} r ; then begin your scruples about the Act 
of Security and the Treaty of Union ; then you cannot depart 
from the letter of your contract ; then if we ask for justice you 
turn away your faces, and say you must perform your engage- 
ments ; then you appeal to Acts of Parliament, not to put the Church 
in the same situation she held in 1*707, but to persecute those 
who adhere firmly in faith, doctrine, and discipline to the consti- 
tution of the Church of Scotland. These are the present con 
scientious scruples of Her Majesty's Government ; but I must say 
that even its sugar scruples, though they make it the laughing- 
stock of Europe and America, sink into insignificance when com- 
pared with these. Can they have a doubt of the animus imponcntis 
of the Bill of 1712, when they see the names of those who 
opposed it, the name of Carstairs and of Boston, the author of 
The Fourfold State? Suppose we could call them up from their 
graves, and explain to them the revolutions which have since their 
time taken place in the Church of Scotland, and then ask them, 
" Which of these was vour Church at the time of the Union, for 
the protection of which the Articles of the Union and the Act of 
Security were made ?" — have you the slightest doubt of what 
their answer would be ? They would say, " Our Church was not 
the Church you protect, but the Church you oppress ; our Church 
was the Church of Chalmers and Sir David Brewster, not that of 
Brice and Muir." I am entitled to make a strong appeal to those 
Members of the House of Commons who are attached to the 
Church of England. If they think the Bill now proposed wili 
uot be in truth a violation of the Treaty of Union, but that it isn 



306 tJNtVERSlTt£8 (SCOTLAND) BILL. 

as far as it goes, a small reparation for the injustice committed ofl 
that Treaty, I ask, how can they vote for tests that exclude men 
of their own religious persuasion from the Universities of Scot- 
land ? We may differ as to the countenance we may give to what 
we view as error, but he incurs a grave responsibility who perse- 
cutes that which he believes to be truth. Yet that will be the 
position of the zealous member of the Church of England, who 
gives his vote to-night against the Bill on the Table, which 
affects Episcopalians as well as Presbyterian seceders. There 
is another argument which seems stronger still in this regard in 
favour of the Bill. You may say you are averse to removing 
these tests, but the question is not whether you will remove these 
tests, but whether you will impose them ? The laws imposing these 
tests have fallen into disuse. We have heard that disuse made an 
argument by the right hon. Baronet, the Home Secretary, in 
favour of the Irish Colleges Bill ; he said, " the experiment has 
been tried — in Edinburgh, these tests have been disused for near a 
century." I implore the House to remember this ; we are called 
on to establish Colleges in Ireland without tests, and yet we are 
asked to introduce a system of tests into the University of Edin- 
burgh ten times as stringent as the test the hon. Baronet opposite 
(Sir T. Acland) proposed to introduce into the Bill for establishing 
Colleges in Ireland ! Is it possible that the House of Commons 
will bear out the Minister in such an attempt as this ? These tests 
have long been dormant in Edinburgh ; I do not Exaggerate, when 
I say there are at least ten professors who have not subscribed the 
tests. Let the right hon. Baronet the First Lord of the Treasury, 
give the House som-e information on this point, for he has been 
himself Lord Rector of the University, of Glasgow. And observe, 
Episcopalians are precisely the class of men whom these tests were 
meant to exclude ; the tests were made rather against Prelacy 
ihan against Papists ; at that time it was much more likely that a 
Papist should have been punished by the penal laws than made a 



UNIVERSITIES (SCOTLAND) BILL. 307 

professor. Every one knows that the right hon. Baronet the 
Secretary for the Home Department, and the noble Lord the 
Secretary for the Colonies, have also been Lord Rectors of the 
University of Glasgow : they know practically, that these tests are 
obsolete. Being to this extent obsolete, why are they now imposed \ 
Having so long slept, the attempt is made to revive them, pre- 
cisely because a schism has taken place, and there has been a 
vigorous demonstration of differences which you mi^ht have laid 
to sleep for ever. They were not enforced while the Church of 
the people was the Church of Scotland ; but you begin to enforce 
them as soon as the majority of the people become Dissenters. 
You enforce them as they never were enforced before ; and the 
very moment you do so you make the Universities sectarian bodies. 
The Presbytery certainly deserves credit for striking at high game ; 
their attack is against Sir David Brewster. I hold in my hand 
the libel. The word is here used in its technical meaning ; in the 
law language of Scotland, equivalent to " charge" or " declaration " 
in this case of Sir David Brewster, containing the proceedings 
taken with the view of ejecting him from his office as Principal of 
St. Andrew's College, his offence being neither more nor less than 
this — that he adheres in all points to the doctrine and discipline 
of the Church of Scotland as it existed at the time of the Union. 
Here we have an instrument put forward against him conceived 
in such a spirit that I must say with respect' to the Presbytery, 
that it will have very little right on any future occasion to say 
anything about the arrogance and intolerance of the Vatican. 
The libel declares — 

" That the Senatus and Faculty of the University of St. Andrew's ought 
to be required forthwith to redress the evil which you have brought upon 
the Church, by taking all steps competent to them for removing you from 
the office of principal of the United College, and that the Senatus be 
required to report to the Presbytery, quam primuni, what steps they 
bftye adopted to effect this, that you may be removed from your office, an^ 



308 UNIVERSITIES (SCOTLAND) DILL. 

visited with such other censure or punishment as the laws of the Chui ;h 
enjoin for the glory of God, the safety of the Church, and the prosperity 
of the University, and to deter others holding the same important office 
from committing the like offence in all time coming, but that others may 
hear and fear the danger and detriment of following devisive courses." 

And here is another question — 

" For the glory of God, the safety of the Church, and the prosperity of 
the University 1" 

" The glory of God !" As far as that is concerned, I will here say 
nothing more than this — it is not the first time the glory of God 
has been made the pretext for the temerity and the injustice of 
man. As to the safety of the Church — if, which God forbid ! the 
Church of Scotland is possessed with the spirit of this Presbytery 
— if, having lost hundreds of able ministers, and hundreds of 
thousands of devout hearers, instead of endeavouring by meek- 
ness and diligence to regain those whom late events have estranged, 
she is ready to make war upon the seceders — if she is determined 
to furbish up for the purpose those old laws, the edge of which 
has long been rusted off, and which were originally meant, not for 
her defence, but for theirs — then are the days of the Church of 
Scotland numbered. With respect to the prosperity of the Uni- 
versity, is there a corner of Europe where men will not laugh 
when they hear that the prosperity of the University of St. 
Andrew's can be promoted by expelling Sir D. Brewster from his 
professorship? The University of Edinburgh knows better how 
its prosperity is to be promoted ; for I believe the Senatus Acade- 
mirus of Edinburgh is almost unanimous in favour of this Bill. 
And, in fact, it is perfectly clear that fearful consequences lie 
before the Universities of Scotland, unless this, or some such mea- 
sure, is carried speedily ; if it is delayed, I believe there will be a 
new College founded and endowed with that munificence of which, 
in the Free Church, we have seen so many examples, Fronj 



UNtVERSITIRS (SCOTT. AM)) HILL. 30§ 

the dav such a College arises, there is nothing before the Uni- 
versities of Scotland but a gradual and, I fear, not a distant de- 
struction. Even now it is notorious, such is the competition and 
emoluments of other pursuits of life, that it is difficult to procure 
eminent men to fill the chairs of the Universities. We can now 
choose from the whole of Scotland, from the whole world, men to 
fill the office of professors. Throw out this Bill, and you narrow 
this choice to half of Scotland or less ; the diminution of students 
will lower the emoluments of the chair to less than half their 
present amount. What will be the consequences ? Is it possible 
not to see that you will have a lower class of professors ? With 
the inferior abilities of the professor, the students will decrease, 
the decline will be rapid and headlong ; and it is clear that all 
will sink into utter decay, till the lectures are deserted, the halls 
empty, and a man not fit to be a village dominie will occupy the 
chair of a Dugald Stewart, an Adam Smith, a Reid, a Black, a 
Playfair, and a Jameson. How do Her Majesty's Ministers like 
such a prospect as this ? The right hon. Baronet the Secretary 
for the Home Department has already, by his misfortune or his 
fault, secured no enviable place in the annals of Scotland ; his 
name is inseparably associated with the disruption of the Scotch 
Church. Will he ruin the Scotch Universities ? If the Govern- 
ment were consistent, even though it acted on an erroneous prin- 
ciple — though we might disapprove, it would be with some 
mixture of respect ; but a Government that is guided by no 
principle whatever — a Government which on the gravest questions 
does not know its own mind for twenty -four hours together — a 
Government that goes from extreme to extreme, backwards and 
forwards, like "a reed shaken by the wind" — a Government that 
is against tests in Ireland, and for tests in Scotland — that is against 
tests at Limerick, and for them at Glasgow — against them in 
Cork, and for them in Edinburgh — that is against tests at Belfast, 
and for them at Aberdeen — that opposes tests on Monday, an J 



516 txiVEitsitrEs (scotland) Mlu 

advocates them on Wednesday, to oppose them on Thursday agaiti 
-—it is impossible such a Government can command either respect 
or confidence. Is it strange that the most liberal measures of such 
a Government should fail to gain the applause of liberal men ? Is 
it strange that it should lose the confidence of one-half the nation, 
without gaining that of the other half? But I speak not to the 
Government : I appeal to the House ; I appeal to those who, on 
Monday evening, voted with the Government against the test pro- 
posed by the hon. Baronet the Member for North Devon (Sir T, 
Acland). I know party obligations are strong ; but there is a 
mire so black and so deep that men should refuse to be dragged 
through it. It is only forty-eight hours since hon. Gentlemen 
came down to vote against a test requiring the professors in the 
Irish Colleges to be believers in the Gospel ; and now the same 
hon. Gentlemen are expected to come down and vote that no man 
shall be permitted to be a professor in a College in Scotland who 
will not declare his adherence in all parts to the system of Church 
government in Scotland. This is a matter of gross injustice to 
Scotland on the part of the Government; but its injustice to its 
own faithful followers surpasses it. The zealous members of the 
Church of England, I implore them to consider well before they 
make it penal to hold those doctrines they believe to be true ; 
lastly, I call on every man, of every party, who loves knowledge 
and science and literature, who is a friend of peace, and respects 
the solemn obligations of public faith, to stand by us this day, in 
this last attempt to avert the destruction that threatens the Uni- 
versities of Scotland. I move that the Bill be read a second 
time. 



FROST, WILLIAMS, AND JONES.* 

march 10, 1846. 

[On a motion "That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, 
praying that She will be graciously pleased to take into Her Majesty's most 
gracious consideration the Petitions of the People presented during the 
present Session of Parliament, in favour of a restoration to their native land 
of Frost, Williams, and Jones."] 

T would not, Sir, say a single word on this question, if my lion. 
Friend had not brought forward my name in the course of his 
speech, and if, in doing so, he had not, he must permit me to say, 
fallen into some mistakes. There exists no such connection as my 
lion. Friend appears to think between the letters which he intro- 
duced to the attention of the House and his Motion. Those 
letters were written by me at different times and to different per- 
sons. One of them was in answer to a private letter from one of 
my constituents, informing me of some scrupulous feelings which 
he and others entertained respecting the proposed caliing out of the 
militia ; and the other was written in answer to the secretary of a 
committee, asking me to support the Motion of the hon. Gentle- 
man on this matter. I had no notion that either of these letters 
would have been published, though they were published at the 
same time ; and perhaps I have some reason to complain of their 
publication, and especially that they should have been published 
together. They were published without my consent or authority, 
and not only that, but by persons taking the same view of this 

•Hansard, 3d Series, vol. Iwuav. p. 883-9§ 



312 FROST, WILLIAMS, AND JONES. 

question which the lion. Gentleman himself takes, by persons whu 
conceived that the publication of these letters might possibly be 
acceptable at the place which I have the honour to represent, but 
certainly not with any view to prejudice the persons whose case is 
now under discussion. With regard to the first of these letters, I 
mean to pass over all that has been said by the hon. Gentleman 
respecting his Motion in 1842, for an extension of the elective Iran 
chise, as I think it would be very much out of place were I, on 
this occasion, to go over all the grounds that he went through on 
the subject. There is not one word in that letter which, on the 
discussion of the petition which the hon. Gentleman presented, i 
did not state in the most distinct manner, giving him an opportunity 
of refuting it at the time ; and I will add, there is not a word in 
that letter which I am not still prepared to abide by. I will not 
turn away from the question before the House, by deviating into a 
discussion on the principles of Chartism ; but I will ask every hon. 
Gentleman to read for himself that national petition, and then 
judge whether I did, or not, take a correct view regarding it. And 
I beg to say, also, that though the letter which I wrote on the 
subject of the liberation of Frost, Williams, and Jones, was written 
without the least expectation that it would be ever published, 
there is not one word in that letter which I am not prepared to 
reassert and maintain. But to come to the Motion before the 
House. In the first place, I have a preliminary objection to the 
hon. Gentleman's Motion — an objection which would be decisive 
with me, if the grounds on which he has brought it forward were 
even much stronger than I think they are. I have an insurmount- 
able objection to interfere — for this House to interfere — with this 
particular prerogative of the Crown. No doubt this House has a 
right to advise the Queen with respect to the exercise of any of 
the prerogatives of the Crown. There is no law which says you 
may advise the Queen with regard to the exercise of certain pre- 
rogatives j but there are other prerogatives of the Crown on which 



FROST, WILLIAMS, AND JONES. 313 

the House of Commons is not to advise Her Majesty. There is nc 
such law as this. But the discretion of former Houses of Com- 
mons has imposed laws upon themselves, and our discretion ought 
to impose similar laws on ourselves, as to the extent to which this 
advice should be given. There are certain rules which usage has 
laid down, and which we ought not lightly to pass over. There 
are some prerogatives of the Crown with respect to which we ought 
to offer advice, and there are some prerogatives with respect to 
which the Ministers of the Crown would be greatly to blame if 
they did not ask our advice before we offered it. For instance, the 
right of declaring war is strictly a prerogative of the Crown, and 
yet 1 think any Minister of the Crown would be much deserving 
of blame if he did not bring down a message to this House, ask- 
ing our advice and co-operation, and ascertaining whether the 
House of Commons was prepared to grant supplies for carrying on 
the war, before the prerogative was acted on. But there are other 
matters connected with the prerogative of the Crown — the com- 
mand of the army, for example — on whicli I do not suppose that 
any person would allege we ought to interfei ). That is a branch 
of the administration with which this House can have nothing to 
do ; and I pass from it to the prerogative of the Crown involved 
in the question now before us — the prerogative of mercy. It is no 
superstition, no blind veneration for the prerogatives of Her 
Majesty, no desire that these prerogatives should be exercised with- 
out check, which would make me wish not to interfere in their use ; 
but I say that those by whom Her Majesty is to be advised as to 
the exercise of that prerogative of mercy, and who are responsible 
tor its results— that those who should be responsible for the peace 
and well-being of the community — should be able to assent to the 
extension of the royal prerogative of mercy in every case in which 
it is exercised. That they should be able to feel that the exercise 
of this prerogative in any instance is not dangerous or injurious to 
tlie peace and order of society, when they are answen»t>lo for the 
vol n, H 



314 FROST, WILLIAMS, AND JONES. 

effect which it may produce, and when they are bound to see that 
that peace and order 5 are preserved. Is there not an object of effi- 
cacy kept in sight, in saying that they who have in view all tha< 
the necessities of society may require, shall be the persons tc 
tender to Her Majesty the advice under which she uses this prero- 
gative? My hon. Friend seems to look at this prerogative in an 
erroneous light. lie seems to think that the exercise of the prero- 
gative of mercy is a matter of mere amusement to the Sovereign 
— that it is a thing to he used for the purpose of giving pleasure. 
That is not a right view of the prerogative of mercy. I do not 
imagine that the royal prerogative of mercy is a thing to be let off 
like fireworks in order to celebrate a festivity, and to gratify the 
public mind. I think that it is a distinct part of justice — that it is 
a very solemn and awful trust resting on these principles. The 
Government is bound to preserve the peace of society — to see full 
protection given to life and property — and it is bound to do so 
with the smallest infliction of suffering, even to the guilty, com- 
patible with the attainment of that object. To consider the exer- 
cise of the prerogative of mercy as a matter of gaiety, is next to 
the consideration of punishment as pure revenge. The two views 
go together. The hon. Gentleman, in alluding to the first, 
reminded me of the king in Tom Thumb, who, when good news 
arrived, ordered the celebration of a universal holiday, but who 
afterwards, when another messenger came in with disagreeable 
intelligence, gave orders to the schoolmaster to whip all the boys. 
I do not think that view of the prerogative of mercy is consonant 
to the English Constitution, In this country the exercise of the 
prerogative should not, as in the case of some continental govern- 
ments, be allowed to depend on casual circumstances, as on the 
event of a lucky birth in the Royal Family; and yet this appear* 
to me to be but a fair analogy to the notion which the hon. Gen- 
tleman has advanced. The view that J take of the subject is this; 
{ $????^ v § fe£ &g r rero ptjve-of mercy js always likely to be best 



£Jt6\ST, WILLIAMS, AND JONES. Bit 

Useu when used in conformity with the advice of those on whom 
rests the responsibility of watching over the public security. There 
is no such burden over us. For us there would be nothing easier 
— according to the established usage of Parliament — than to seek 
to gratify the feelings of our constituents by making Motions for 
an extension of the Royal prerogative of mercy in favour of all 
sorts of persons ; and if once the precedent be set, depend upon it 
you will have it soon followed by hon. Gentlemen anxious to give 
no offence to their constituents; and we shall have Motions of this 
sort made in the case of every enormous criminal who may be 
sentenced to death. Have not petitions been presented in favour 
of every convict, no matter how great his offence may be? And 
I say the circumstance is perfectly intelligible. It is the natural 
reaction of the human mind against that barbarous penal code 
which was enforced in England up to the close of the last century. 
It is the natural reaction against the severity of our criminal law 
until a recent period. We have a sort of feeling which it is 
impossible to account for in the mind, arising from a repugnance 
at the severity of the law ; and the result is, that there is no case 
of atrocity so horrible that people — a}', thousands of people — will 
not be found petitioning for mercy in favour of the perpetrator of 
it. And, I say, that if this House give due encouragement to this 
neling, the people will almost force their representatives to make 
Motions similar to the present in every case where a capital punish- 
ment may be awarded. We had a case a short time ago, in which 
the greatest exertions were made to procure the release of a most 
infamous hypocrite who to the last moment pretended innocence. 
He had poisoned an unfortunate woman, to whom he was bound 
bv the tenderest ties ; and who, whatever might have been her 
errors, towards him maintained the most irreproachable conduct. 
There was not one circumstance of palliation in his case. He had 
all the advantages that religion, all the advantages that station, all 
the advantages that education could have afforded him ; yet, not- 



'Si 6 FROST, WILLIAMS, AND JON&S. 

withstanding this aggravation of his guilt, we had persona of tiu 
most pure and religious feelings petitioning in his favour. Even 
dignitaries of the Church of England signed such petitions, praying 
that a woman might not be hanged. She was represented to be 
so good — so excellent an instructress of youth — and her services 
would be so valuable in a penal Colony in instructing the children 
there in the precepts of religion, that her life was earnestly prayed 
for. She had been, it was said, irreproachable through life — her 
only offence, forsooth, being the little one of having mixed some 
arsenic in her father's drink; and petitions were poured in, praying 
that she should not expiate her crime upon the scaffold. If the 
prerogative of the Crown were to be used in favour of sucli crimi- 
nals, every one of us would soon be concerned in bringing for- 
ward cases of the same character. We should find it difficult to 
refuse the calls that would be made upon us to make Motions 
similar to the present. We should have the House occupied almost 
every day with such matters. I therefore think it necessary to 
make a stand, in the first instance, against such a system. I have 
no hesitation in saying, with regard to this power — the prerogative 
of mercy — that I would rather entrust it in the hands of the very 
worst Ministry that ever held office, than allow it to be exercised 
under the direction of the very best House of Commons. If you 
acquiesce in my opinion, there is no difficulty that you cannot easily 
get through. The plain course is open before you. If you think 
the law too severe, mitigate it. It belongs to legislative authority 
to do so. If you think the Ministry do not exercise the preroga- 
tive of mercy where they ought, then address the Crown to remove 
them. But while you have a Ministry from whom you do not 
think you would be justified in withdrawing your confidence, then 
you are bound to leave them, as your ancestors did, free to advise 
the exercise of the Royal prerogative according to the best of their 
own judgment and discretion. I do not know a case in which, as 
a Member of the House of Commons, I should be disposed to 



£R0st, Williams, and jones. Si 



h 



interfere with the Ministry in advising the Crown on this matter 
If I could contemplate such a case, it would be some case of most 
momentous necessity — some flagitious and monstrous case of 
oppression — something like the severity that had been exercised in 
the reign of King James the Second, against those who had taken 
up arms against him in the Monmouth rebellion — some case the 
mere mention of which would be enough to make the blood boil 
— to make the hair of one's head stand on end. But is the present 
a case of that description ? These three persons raised 4,000 or 
5,000 men armed, some with fire-arms, some with scythes, some 
with pitchforks, many, in fact a large proportion, with deadly 
weapons of various kinds ; and at midnight they marched with 
them for the purpose of taking a town. They fired on the Queen's 
troops, they wounded a magistrate in the discharge of his duty. 
[Mr. Duncombe : He was not wounded by them.] He was 
wounded by the fire of the traitors who were so armed. [Mr. 
Duncombe : No, no.] I certainly read the trial formerly, and 
unless my recollection altogether deceives me, the fact was as I 
have stated. I believe it is the case, that two wounds were received 
by Sir Thomas Phillips, who behaved on the occasion with a gal- 
lantry that would have done honour to a veteran soldier, much 
more to a man who had been trained in the civil service. After he- 
was wounded, he avoided mentioning the matter to the private sol- 
diers, but called Lieutenant Gray aside, and stated the fact to him. 
I believe it appeared on the trial that this attack was intended to 
lead to a great rising of the Chartists in the middle and northern 
counties of England. That was part of the evidence adduced. 
Now when I consider the language used by Chief Justice Tindal — 
1 allude to the passage read by the right hon. Gentleman opposite 
— I ask, is it too strong for such an occasion ? Does it even come 
up to the necessary conception of the enormity of the offence? 
When we imagine the effect of a great civil war between classes 
in England — and that is what these persons projected — that is what 



iU8 FROST, WtLLIAMS, AND JONES. 

they desired — that is what they intended — it would be worse that 
any war we ever read of. Remember the wealth — -remember the 
civilization — remember the power of all those classes. They were 
possessed of advantages, to retain which they would have made 
every possible effort. A civil war commenced under these circum- 
stances, and with such objects 'n view, would be a visitation more 
horrible than can possibly be conceived — more tremendous than 
f ,his country ever saw. It would be more dreadful than the wars 
of the cavaliers and the roundheads in the seventeenth century. 
Other wars may be carried on without producing any great or irre- 
parable destruction. Soldiers may be slaughtered on the field of 
battle. There may be executions after the battle. But then the 
evils effected are not of an overwhelming character. There is no 
irreparable wound offered to the civilization of the country. The 
land may recover after such battles even as those of Tow ton or of 
Bosworth ; but do you imagine that such would be the case after a 
great war of classes in this country ? All the power of imagina- 
tion fails to paint the horrors of such a contest. It would produce 
a shock that would be felt to the end of the civilized world, and 
that our grandchildren and posterity far into the twentieth century 
would have cause to lament and deprecate. And yet this is what 
these men attempted. Are we to take this as a light case ? Is 
what they meditated a trifle? Were the means they had recourse 
to of a slight kind? Were their objects small and insignificant? 
Was their purpose one which we should ordinarily be not likely to 
reject? Is all crime against society in itself so very low and 
trivial ? the murder, and rapine, and spoliation, and every excess 
of brutality, so unimportant that any motives are sufficient to com- 
mit and to sanction them ! Is it nothing that the design comprised 
all the mischief that can act upon the human mind ? I speak of 
the ringleaders. God forbid that I should thus describe the con- 
duct of the unhappy multitude who followed them ? — though even 
for them no individual can have any sympathy — even for those who 



FROST, WILLIAMS, AND JONES. 319 

fell by the fire of the troops. But, remember, that in order t. be 
merciful to the multitude, we must show, at least, ordinary severity 
to the ringleaders. Every man who commits a crime means to 
succeed in the object which he has in view. The principal ringleader 
in this instance hoped to succeed in raising himself from the station 
of a linendraper in a country town, to be the protector of a king- 
dom — to be one of the rulers of the public State — to be put upon 
.he same footing with the potentates of Europe, with boundless 
ueans of gratifying his rapacity — if that be his passion — or of 
gratifying any other prevailing disposition which he may have, 
lie hoped for boundless distinction and honours. These are the 
sort of motives which actuate the designers of such a crime. This 
is the sort of distinction which those aim at in meditating a mea- 
sure of this kind — who seek to establish a new form of govern- 
ment; and yet a Morion is now made to put an end to a punish- 
ment for such a crime, which would be scarcely thought too great 
for a case of misdemeanour. Is it not possible that these men may 
find imitators, if it shall go forth to the world that persons 
guilty of high treason — men who have shed blood, who have 
meditated a great civil war, a civil war of the worst of all kinds, a 
war of class against class — are to escape with a less amount of 
punishment than the shop-boy who filches five shillings from the 
till, or than the woman who steals a piece of ribbon from the 
counter? What is the use of law unless its punishments bear 
some sort of proportion to the crime committed ? The hon. Gen- 
tleman alluded to f he case of Canada in the last rebellion. But 
were none of the Canadian rebels hanged ? Is there any resem- 
blance between that v.id the case the lion. Member seeks to 
establish? In Canada you hanged the most guilty— which was 
proper— -and you pardoned the others. It is exactly the same case 
here, except that you hanged nobody. You transported the ring 
leaders; but how many of the 4,000 or 5,000 that they brought 
with them, $n4 who were technically guilty of treason, were even 



320 FROST, WILLIAMS, AND JONES. 

five. I s ? The lion. Gentleman argues as if in this case we a&t 
hauled a good many ringleaders, and spared the rest. I have said 
more than I intended. I observed the highly questionable nature 
of the argument used by the hon. Gentleman, and I could not 
allow it to pass unnoticed. I do not mean to say that under no 
circumstances would the Government be justified in extending the 
mercy of the Crown to these persons ; and in voting against the 
Motion of the hon. Gentleman, I do not object to such an exten- 
sion of the Royal mercy on a proper occasion. Were I to do that, 
I should imitate the conduct of the hon. Member, which I condemn. 
The only opinion which I express is, that Her Majesty's Ministers 
are not to be forced by the House to exercise the prerogative with 
which they are entrusted, contrary to their own judgment. It 
would be certainly inconvenient, and perhaps unprecedented, tor 
the House to interfere with the prerogative of mercy. 






ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL* 

feb. 24, 1847. 

I am truly sorry, Sir, that this question should come on when some 
hon. Members who are eminently qualified to discuss it are neces- 
sarily absent ; and I regret also that it should be debated on a day 
when, should a division take place, only an imperfect representa- 
tion of the general sense of the House can be obtained. I cannot, 
however, shrink from shortly and temperately stating the opinion 
I entertain. And, first, I will state that I conceive that whenever 
a Bill is brought in that contains a great quantity of matter which 
the House ought to place on the Statute-book, it is not an objec- 
tion to the second reading of that Bill, that there may be some 
portion of it which it cannot be possible to admit upon the Statute- 
book ; and I shall therefore think my vote sufficiently vindicated 
if I can show that many of the provisions of the Bill are provisions 
to which we ought undoubtedly to give the force of law. Now, 
Sir, the first provision of the first clause of the Bill, the hon. Baro- 
net who has just spoken has not ventured to pronounce to be 
improper, nor has the hon. Gentleman who spoke last character- 
ized it as an improper provision. The hon. Member for Oxford 
himself — the learned Recorder for Dublin — does not condemn the 
provision. In fact, it is one which I may confidently challenge 
any Gentleman in the House to pronounce to be an improper pro- 
vision. For what is that provision ? Is it the intention of this 
House that every Roman Catholic in England shall bo subject to 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. xc p. 47g-4tt« 



322 ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL. 

fine and imprisonment for being a Roman Catholic ? Now, I «vy 
that until yon pass this clause of the Bill, which proposes to repea 
the 1st of Elizabeth, c. 1, relating to the supremacy, every Roman 
Catholic in England is liable to fine and imprisonment for being a 
Roman Catholic. The law to be repealed is to this effect : — 

"That any person whatever affirming, holding, setting forth, maintain- 
ing, or defending the doetrine, that, any foreign prince, prelate, person, 
State, or potentate whatever, has any authority, pre-eminence, power, or 
jurisdiction, spiritual or ecclesiastical, within this realm, shall be liable to 
tine an 1 imprisonment; and that any person whatever, who advisedly does 
anything for the extolling, setting forth, maintenance, or defence of such 
jurisdiction, power, pre-eminence, and authority, shall also be liable t« fine 
and imprisonment." 

Now, this enactment, though repealed as to the particular penal- 
ties and punishments referred to in it, by the act of last Ses- 
sion, remains in all other respects the same as if the Act of last 
Session had not been passed; and the holding, maintaining, and 
enforcing this doctrine still remains, as I understand, a misde- 
meanour, and therefore punishable by fine and imprisonment. I 
will ask you, then, does not that enactment include at the present 
moment every Roman Catholic in England ? Does not every 
Roman Catholic in this country believe and hold that some spiritual 
jurisdiction resides in the Bishop of Rome ? I know that there 
have been great contests on that matter ; I know there were great 
contests upon it at the Council of Trent ; I know that some Jesuits 
have attributed to the Bishop of Rome a much greater degree of 
spiritual jurisdiction than the Gall ican Church gives him ; I know 
that some writers have placed his spiritual authority far above that 
of general councils ; that some have made him co-ordinate with 
general councils, and some subordinate to general councils ; but 
take the whole range of Roman Catholic teachers and writers, from 
Aquinas down to Bossuet, and you will find not one Roman 
Oatfcojic' writer but holds that some spiritual jurisdiction ioes 



ROMAN CAflioUC RELIEF RILL. 82S 

reside in the Bishop of Rome. There is no Roman Catholic in 
this country, then, but must consider himself in communion, of 
some sort or other, with the Bishop of Rome. Therefore I say, 
that there is no Roman Catholic in this country who, under the 
law as it stands, is not liable to fine and imprisonment. Now, I 
wish to know whether there is any Gentleman in this House whc 
thinks that it is right or just that every Roman Catholic who 
teaches his sons the doctrines of the Roman Catholic faith, and 
this amongst others, and that every Roman Catholic priest who 
teaches to his congregation this among others of the fundamental 
doctrines of his creed, should be liable to fine and imprisonment 
for doing so ? If it is to be asserted this day, that every Roman 
Catholic, for holding the doctrines of the Roman Catholic religion, 
shall be liable to fine and imprisonment, then just suppose that 
the Government were to hold it to be their duty to order the 
Attorney-General to proceed against persons to whom any proceed- 
ings or conduct contrary to this statute were attributable ; and 
suppose Dr. Wiseman was to preach a sermon on the text, " Thou 
art Peter," treating it in the sense in which it is understood by the 
whole Roman Catholic Church, is it seriously meant that the 
Attorney General should be obliged to prosecute Dr. Wiseman for 
teaching: and enforcing; this doctrine? And if Dr. Wiseman was 
sent to Newgate for preaching that sermon, is there one man in this 
House who could say that it would be justifiable ? I venture to 
say there is not. Here, then, you have an enactment which this 
Bill proposes to repeal, and of which, I will venture to say, you 
cannot put a single hypothetical case in which you can possibly 
enforce it. But what is the state of our legislation now with refer- 
ence to this subject generally ? There are in this country several 
religious sects who dissent from the established religion of the 
country, and what is to be your course with regard to them ? You 
may take that which I think is the true course to take — you may 
impose on them neither penalties nor disabilities by law ; or you 



324 ROMAfr CATHOttC RELlfiF BILL. 

may take an extreme course, and may impose on them both 
penalties and disabilities by law ; or you may take a third course, 
which I have heard agitated in this House, and never more ear- 
nestly than by the hon. Member for the University of Oxford, and 
the supporters of which are accustomed to say, " Don't let us 
punish, don't let us hang — the votaries of these doctrines, but let us 
keep them from power." But what can be more unreasonable 
than this ? You admit the Roman Catholic to political power in 
this House, and you dispense him from the oath of supremacy, 
instead of which he takes another oath on his entrance among: us : 
and yet he remains liable to pains and penalties for infringing this 
statute for enforcing the supremacy of the Crown which you have 
not repealed. Is it not unfitting that the House should allow an 
Act of Parliament to remain on the Statute-book, of which the 
best defence is that it is never executed ? Taking" a fair view of 
the matter of the Bill, as brought forward by the hon. and learned 
Member for Kinsale, it hardly can be asked that we should not 
pass this part of the Bill because it goes to repeal an enactment 
that will never be executed. If so, why not affirm this proposition, 
that we will never repeal any statute that is never executed ? Sir, 
I think we should disgrace ourselves, and injure the character of 
this country, by hesitating about our vote as to the provisions con- 
tained on the second page of the Bill ; and this applies also to the 
greater part of the provisions on the next page. Now, as to the 
first of these, for the repeal of the law against the bringing in and 
putting in execution of bulls, writings, or instruments, and other 
superstitious things from the see of Rome, my hon. Friend the 
Membei for the University of Oxford, was mistaken — he must par- 
don me for saving so — in what he has said ; for he said, that this 
part of the hon. and learned Member for Kinsale's Bill was unne- 
cessary, because that law against the importation of bulls, writings, 
or instruments, or other superstitious things, from the see of Rome, 
was done away with by the Act of last Session. But what was 



ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIEF DILL. 325 

really repealed by the Act of last Session ? Why, the Act against 
the importation of bulls, writings, or instruments, or other supersti- 
tious things, was repealed, ''so far only as the same imposes the 
penalties or punishments therein mentioned ;" but it was also 
expressly declared that there was nothing in the Act to ''author- 
ize, or render it lawful, for any person or persons to import, bring 
in, or put in execution within this realm, any such bulls, writings, 
or instruments; and that in all respects, save as to the said penal- 
ties or punishments, the law shall continue the same as if this 
enactment had not been made." The effect of this is to leave the 
bringing in a bull, a rescript, or an Agnus Del into this kingdom, 
subject to tine and imprisonment, as for a misdemeanour. Now 
I must say, that it a little weakens the respect which I must fee 
for the lion. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Spooner), to hear him 
say to the House, as he did in one of the debates on the Bill of the 
hon. and learned Member for Kinsale, of last Session, that he could 
not reconcile to his conscience the repeal of a law which made those 
who brought in bulls from Koine liable to be hanged, drawn, and 
quartered. Is it really meant to continue legislating for the Roman 
Catholics, so as to prevent their importing a crucifix from Koine, 
without being liable to pains and penalties \ Is it really meant to 
maintain that law ? Sir, it seems to me, that as to these provi- 
sions, and until we come down to those parts of the Bill which tiie 
lion, and learned Member for Kinsale declares that he is willing to 
modify, we come to nothing which we ought to dispute about. 
Then, Sir, supposing that those latter parts of the Bill may be 
objectionable, was it ever heard of that a Bill generally approved 
of, was ever thrown out on the second reading for a clause which 
the Member who brought it in declared that he was willing to 
modify ? But, Sir, having said this, I must also say, that I think 
it would be most inexpedient and unjustifiable to confer on Roman 
Catholic ecclesiastics the power of making the processions of their 
church in public in this country. Even James the Second, when 



ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL. 

he was treating with the Roman Catholics in Scotland, thought 
it necessary for the public peace that no processions should pasr 
through the streets ; and I must say, I think to allow it, would be 
most objectionable, because I believe that it would lead to vio- 
lations of decency and disturb;. nces of the public peace. I am 
convinced that no procession could pass through the streets with- 
out something occurring that must be offensive to the feelings of 
every Roman Catholic. T think few processions could take place 
without leading to disturbance or breach of the peace. Religious 
processions are not allowed in India, though, if there be a tolerant 
Government on the face of the earth, I think it is the Government 
of India ; yet they constantly prohibit the processions of the 
Mahometans, because such processions would be dangerous to the 
public peace from the risk of collision with the followers of AH and 
Omar ; and I must say that I have no objection to any law which 
prevents the celebration in public of Roman Catholic rites, which, 
when celebrated in public, are likely to be celebrated amidst cir- 
cumstances of indecency or outrage'; Then, with respect to religious 
societies and orders, 1 do not think it a just or reasonable thing 
that an English Roman Catholic subject, tor being a member of an 
order — a Franciscan for instance — should be banished the country, 
and if he returns should be hanged. It is perfectly clear that such 
an enactment cannot be enforced. Everybody knows that there 
are regular clergy of the Church of Rome in this country, but still 
not a single human being dares, or ever will dare, to put the law 
against them in execution. But, Sir, while I say that I have no 
objection to that which many persons think of importance, I do 
not see whv a system of registration should be objectionable; ] 
cannot think that the religious orders of the Church of Rome could 
object to that. My objection is to enacting a punishment agaiict 
a man for being a Franciscan; but it is not to punish a man for 
being a Franciscan, to oblige him to tell the country that lie is 
Qiie, Sir, with respect to the Jesuits. I am far from giving credit 



ftOMAS* tkritoUc MkiAtP feiLL 52* 

to all the idle scandal that may be wandering- over England or 
France about them ; but I say, that if a person, who is a Jesuit, is 
found mingling in society, and disguising the fact that he is so, such 
a person would be a just object of suspicion to the heads of families 
with whom lie associates, that he is there for the ourpose of con- 
version. Therefore, I think that it is desirable that there should be 
some system of registration, under which it should be known who 
are, and who are not, members of religious orders in this country. 
That, I think, is perfectly compatible with religious liberty, and alsj 
necessary for the security of society. 



GOVERNMENT PLAN OF EDUCATION * 

april 19, 1847. 

I venture, Sir, to offer myself to your notice for tins reason — as a 
Member of that Council whose conduct is called in question, the 
first duty I performed was to give my hearty assent to the Minutes 
of the plan of education ; I am, therefore, one of those who have 
been accused throughout the country — who are accused in this 
House — of aiming, under an artful pretence of educating the 
people, a blow at the civil and religious liberties of the country. 
It is natural, therefore, that I should take the earliest opportunity 
of vindicating myself from these charges. The hon. member for 
Finsbury must excuse me if, in the remarks I shall offer to the 
House, I do not attempt to follow very closely the course of his 
speech. The hon. Member must excuse me if I say I should very 
imperfectly vindicate the conduct of the Committee of the Privy 
Council by doing so. For, considering the degree of acuteness 
and ability possessed by the hon. Gentleman, and the excitement 
produced throughout the country by the conflict of the principles 
by which society is divided with respect to this question, I must 
express my astonishment that to these great principles scarcely one 
allusion was made in the whole course of the speech of my hon 
Friend. He brought in local anecdotes — personal anecdotes — h« 
raised questions upon collateral points ; but, after listening atten- 
tively from the beginning of his speech to the end, I am utterly 
unable to discover what his opinion is, even on the great funda- 
mental principle that at this moment divides the country—- 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. xei. p. 1006-1026. 



Covfeimmxt ptAtt of ebtfCAWdff. 929 

whether the education of the common people be or be not some- 
thing to which it is the duty of the State to attend. The hon. 
Member sat down leaving us utterly ignorant of the opinion he 
entertains on that important subject. Yet I have no hesitation in 
saying, that, on the opinion we entertain on that question — on the 
iense we may have of the duty of the State to educate the people 
— must altogether depend the view we take of every plan sub- 
mitted to us for that purpose. When I consider how much excite- 
ment has been raised throughout the country on this point, and 
.how large a proportion of the petitions laid on the Table express 
an opinion I must consider most groundless, T feel it my duty 
to commence the observations I have to offer to the House by 
stating in the clearest manner my opinion on that great part 
of the subject. I hold that it is the right and duty of the State 
to provide for the education of the common people. I conceive 
the arguments by which this position may be proved are perfectly 
simple, perfectly obvious, and the most cogent possible. For what 
ends was government instituted, is a question on which the most 
ingenious men have differed; some hold that it is the dutv of 
a government to meddle with the whole system of human life — 
that it should regulate the operations of trade by prohibitions, 
expense by sumptuary laws, literature by a censorship, and 
religion by penal statutes. Others have gone to the opposite 
extreme, and have cut down the province of a government to 
what I think is too narrow a limit. But it quite unnecessary on 
the present occasion to go into any of these controversial points ; 
for on one point we are ail agreed : I say that all are agreed thai 
it is the sacred duty of every government to take effectual inci- 
sures for securing the persons and property of the community ; 
and that the government which neglects that duty is unfit for its 
situation. This being once admitted, I ask, can it be denied fehat 
the education of the common people is the most effectual means of 
protecting persons and property ? On that subject I cannot refci 



Government plan of education. 

to higher authority, or use more strong terms, than have beers 
employed by Adam Smith ; and I take his authority the more 
readily, because he is not very friendly to State interference : and 
almost on the same page as that I refer to, he declares that the 
State ought not to meddle with the education of the higher orders ; 
but he distinctly says that there is a difference, particularly in a 
highly civilized and commercial community, between the educa- 
tion of the higher classes and the education of the poor. The 
education of the poor he pronounces to be a matter in which 
Government is most deeply concerned ; and he compares igno,- 
rance, spread through the lower classes, neglected by the State, to 
a leprosy, or some other fearful disease, and says that where 
this duty is neglected, the State is in danger of falling into the 
terrible disorder. He had scarcely written this than the axiom 
was fearfully illustrated in the riots of 1780. I do not know if 
from all history I could select a stronger instance of my position, 
when I say that ignorance makes the persons and property of the 
community unsafe, and that the Government is bound to take 
measures to prevent that ignorance. On that occasion, what was 
the state of things? Without any shadow of a grievance, at the 
summons of a madman, 100,000 men rising in insurrection — a 
week of anarchy — Parliament besieged — your predecessor, Sir, 
tremblinor in the Chair — the Lords pulled out of their coaches — 
the Bishops flying over the tiles — not a sight, I trust, that would 
be pleasurable even to those who are now so unfavourable to the 
Church of England — thirty-six fires blazing at once in London — 
the house of the Chief Justice sacked — the children of the Prime 
Minister taken out of their beds in their nio-ht clothes, and laid on 
the table of the Horse Guards — and all this the effect of nothing 
but the gross, brutish ignorance of the population, who had been 
left brutes in the midst of Christianity, savages in the midst of 
civilization. Nor is this the only occasion when similar results 
have followed from the same cause. Taj this cause are attribute- 



GOVERNMENT I'LAN OF EDUCATION. 

bJe all the outrages of the Bristol and Nottingham riots, an" all 
the misdeeds of General Hock and Captain Swing ; incendiary fires 
in some districts, and in others riots against machinery, tending 
more than anything else to degrade men to the level of the infe- 
rior animals. Could it have been supposed that all this could 
have taken place in a community were even the common labourer 
to have his mind opened by education, and be taught to find his 
pleasure in the exercise of his intelleet, taught to revere his Maker, 
taught to regard his fellow-creatures with kindness, and taught like- 
wise to ftbl respect for legitimate authority, taught how to pursue 
redress of real wrongs by constitutional methods ? This seems to 
me an irresistible argument on this subject — that it is the clear 
duty of a Government to protect the lives and property of the 
community, and that the gross ignorance of the multitude pro- 
duces danger to the lives and property of the community ; and, 
therefore, I am at a loss to conceive how, on the very lowest 
view of the duties of Government, it can be contended that edu- 
cation is not the province of Government. What is the alter- 
native ? It is granted that Government must protect life and pro- 
perty from spoliation. By some means it must do this. If you take 
away education as a means, what do you leave? Why, means 
which inflict an immense amount of misery, and appeal onlv 
to the lowest parts of human nature. Take away education, and 
what are your means? Military force, prisons, solitary cells, penal 
colonies, gibbets — all the other apparatus of penal laws. If, then, 
there be an end to which Government is bound to attain — if there 
are two ways only of attaining it — if one of those ways is by ele- 
vating the moral and intellectual character of the people, and if 
the other way is by inflicting pain, who can doubt which way 
every Government ought to take? It seems to me that no propo- 
sition can be more strange than this — that the 8t;ite ought to 
have power to punish and is bound to punish its subjects for not 
luiowing their duty, but at the same time is to take no step to let 



332 government flan of education* 

tin m know what their duty is. In my opinion, it would seem less 
paradoxical to say that no Power can be justified in punching 
those whom it neglects to teach. Can we see without shame, and 
something* like remorse, that many of those who, in our own time, 
have been executed in this country for capital crimes, might now 
have been in life, and perhaps useful members of society ; that 
more than half of those who are now in our gaols might have 
been free arid at liberty ; that more than half of those who are now 
in our penal colonies might have been honourably and usefully 
employed on their native soil, if the State had expended in form- 
in'-'- them into honest men but a small part of what had been 
expended in inflicting misery on rogues ? Sir, looking over the 
very first report which was presented to the Committee of the 
Privy Council for Education, and which came from the district of 
Newport, being framed just after that frantic insurrection of which 
I do not need to remind the House, I found that, according to 
that report, it appeared that there were about 11,000 children in 
that district at an age when they ought to have been receiving 
education, but that of those about 8,000 attended no school, and 
that a great many of those who did might as well have staved 
away tor anything useful that they were taught ; that the appara- 
tus of instruction was most faulty — that the masters were some of 
them ruined tradesmen, some of them discarded miners, &i\ — men 
whose sole qualification for tuition was that they were utterly dis- 
qualified for any other pursuit. Then, can it be doubted that a 
population which is reared in such a state, listens readily to the 
bad man who excites it to rise against constituted authority ? 
Thev become his ready prey, his unresisting victims. Then follow 
anarchy, confusion, and an armed insurrection. You, in self- 
defence, and in defence of the constitution committed to your 
charge, resort to arms to quell their violence. You have nothing 
else for it. No choice is left to you. Having neglected the best 
way to make them obedient citizens, vou are forced to take the 



OOVEkxttjexT 1'i.AN of education. 333 

only mode still left to you, arid to fire upon these wretched men. 
It is under the compulsion, the inexorable compulsion of necessity, 
that you do so. But what necessity can be more cruel than that 
of shedding* the blood of people who, in all probability, would 
never have listened to the incentives to crime, if the State had but 
disciplined their passions and purified their minds by educating 
them properly ? I say, therefore, that the education of the people 
ought to be the first concern of a State, not only because it is an 
efficient means for promoting and obtaining that which all allow 
to be the main end of Government, but because it is the most effi- 
cient, the most humane, the most civilized, and in all respects the 
best means of attaining that end. This is my deliberate convic 
tion ; and in this opinion 1 am fortified by thinking that it is also 
the opinion of all the great legislators, of all the great statesmen, 
of all the great political philosophers of all ages and of all 
nations, even including those whose general opinion is, and has 
ever been, to restrict the functions of Government. Sir, it is the 
opinion of ali the greatest champions of civil and religious liberty 
in the old world and in the new; and of none — I hesitate not to 
say it — more emphatically than of those whose names are held 
in the highest estimation by the Protectant Nonconformists of 
England. Assuredly if there be any class of men whom the 
Protestant Nonconformists of England respect more highly than 
another — if any whose memory they hold in deeper veneration — 
it is that class of men, of high spirit and unconquerable principles, 
who in the days of Archbishop Laud preferred leaving their native 
country, and living in the savage solitudes of a wilderness, rather 
than to live in a land of prosperity and plenty, where they could 
not enjoy the privilege of worshipping their Maker freely accord- 
ing to the dictates of their conscience. Those men, illustrious for 
tver in history, were the founders of the commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts; but though their love of freedom of conscience was i.li- 
raitable and indestructible they couM see nothing servile or ijegrnd- 



fH4 GOVERNMENT PLAN OF EDUCATION. 

ing in the principle that the State should take upon itself the 
charge of the education of the people. In the year 1642 they 
passed their first legislative enactment on this subject, in the pre- 
amble of which they distinctly pledged themselves to this principle, 
that education was a matter of the deepest possible importance and 
the greatest possible interest to all nations and to all communities, 
and that as such it was, in an eminent degree, deserving of the 
peculiar attention of the State. I have peculiar satisfaction in 
referring to the case of America, because those who are the most 
enthusiastic advocates of the voluntary principle in matters of reli- 
gion, turn fondly to that land as affording the best illustration 
that can be anywhere found of the successful operation of that 
principle. And yet what do" we find to be the principle of Ame- 
rica and of all the greatest men that she has produced upon the 
question ? " Educate the people," was the first admonition 
addressed by Penn to the commonwealth he founded — " educate 
the people" was the last legacy of Washington to the republic of 
the United States — " educate the people" was the unceasing 
exhortation of Jefferson. Yes, of Jefierson himself; and I quote 
his authority with peculiar favour ; for of all the eminent public 
men that the world ever saw, he was the one whose greatest 
delight it was to pare down the functions of Governments to the 
lowest possible point, and to leave the freest possible scope for 
the exercise of individual exertion. Such was the disposition — 
such, indeed, might be said to be the mission of Jefferson ; and yet 
the latter portion of his life was devoted with ceaseless energy to 
the effort to procure the blessing of a State education for Virginia. 
And against the concurrent testimony of all these great authorities, 
what have you, who take the opposite side, to show ? x\gainst 
this splendid array of authority, you can oppose but one great phi- 
losopher, but one great teacher of wisdom, but one man distin- 
guished for his services in the cause of letters and of humanity. 
JJavo you, I ask, anything else to oppose to the concurrent testi 



flOVtiRNMfitfT t>LAK OF BhtTJAttOK. 335 

niony of the wise, and the good, and the great o** every age and 
of every clime ? Nothing, except a clamor got up so recently as 
in 1846; a clamor in which those who encase condemn not onlv 
the wisest and the best of those who have gone before them, but 
even their former selves. This new theory of government mav at 
least claim the merit of originality. It signifies this, as I read it, 
if it signifies anything — all men have hitherto misconceived the 
proper functions of Government, which are simply those of the 
great hangman of the age ; the business of Government is to 
do nothing for the repression of crime except by harsh and degrad 
ing means. From all other means, which operate by exalting t lie 
intellectual character — by disciplining the passions — by purifving 
man's moral nature — Government is to be peremptorily excluded 
The only means it may employ are those of physical force — of the 
lash, the gibbet, and the musket, and of the terror which they 
evoke. The statesman who wields the destiny of an empire is tc 
look calmly on while the population of cities and towns is hourly 
increasing. He knows that on the moral and intellectual culture 
of the bulk of that population the prosperity of the country, nay 
more, perhaps the very foundations of the State may depend : no 
matter, he is not to dream of operating on their moral and intel- 
lectual nature. He is not to advance their knowledge. lie may 
build barracks as many as he pleases — he may parade bayonets 
and ordnance to overawe them if he dreads their appeal to vio- 
lence ; if they break out into insurrection, lie may send troops 
and artillery to mow them down for violating duties lie never 
taught them ; but of educating them he must not dream. The 
same holds good of the rural districts. He may see, and shudder 
as he sees, the rural population growing up with as little Chris- 
tianity, as little civilization, as little enlightenment as the inhabit- 
ants of New Guinea, so that there is at every period a risk of a 
jacquerie — no matter, he is not to interfere. He must wait till 
the incendiary fires are blazing — till repeated attempts are ma le 



330 GOVEtlN'MfiNT PLAN OP ti&WBkttbb. 

Oh the machinery of the district— till riots occur such as disgraced 
this country in 1830 and 1831 ; and then begins his business, 
which is simply to hang, imprison, or transport the offenders. He 
sees seminaries for crime arising on all hands around him — semi- 
naries which are eagerly attended by the youth of the population; 
but he must not endeavour to allure them from those haunts. He 
may have a thorough conviction on his own mind that if he were 
to offer the means of wholesome instruction to those youth, a very 
great number of them would be drawn away from vice, and 
induced to dedicate their lives to an honourable purpose ; but he 
dare not make the experiment. He must look calmly on with 
folded arms, and suffer those to become the cancers of the State 
who might have been made its power and its strength, lie must 
rem.Mn inactive till the harvest of crime is ripe, and then he must 
set about discharging the duties of his mission, which is, to impri- 
son one man, to hang another, and to send a third to the antipodes, 
[f he venture to raise his voice against this system — if he venture to 
say that it is the duty of a Government to try and make a people 
wiser and better, he is an enemy of human liberty, an oppressor of 
conscience, and ought not to be tolerated. That is the aspect in 
which the new theory presents itself to my mind. It is difficult to 
conceive how any man of clear intellect and of honourable intentions 
— as some, I willingly admit, there are, amongst the opponents of 
this measure — could have brought themselves to view such a theory 
with favour. The explanation which, from all I can hear and see 
and read upon the question, occurs to me, is this — 1 believe this sin- 
gular opposition is a curious instance of the operation of a law, the 
operation of which may be traced in many other questions as well — 
the law of reaction. We have but just concluded a fierce and pro- 
longed contest, the object of which was to extirpate the principle of 
Government interference in matters of trade. Men's passions have 
been excited by that contest just over. Much has been said and 
»nv*h writtm on '.ho advantages of free competition ; but now 



nOVEllKMEXT FLAK OF EDt'CATtOK. RR* 

tliat that principle lias boon accepted as applied to commerce, it if 
to be legretted that the same intelligent men who have succeeded 
in driving the Government out of a province which did not pro- 
perly belong to it, should conspire to drive it out of a province 
which is clearly its legitimate domain. Their argument, or rather 
their fallacy, would appear to be, that, if free competition is good 
in trade, it must be good in the education of the people as well. 
" If it be good in regulating the supply of corn and sugar," they 
say, u it must be equally good in regulating the supply of schools 
to satisfy the educational requirements of the people." But no 
argument from analogy can be falser or more absurd than that. 
In fact, there is no rule of analogy whatever in the two cases. 
There can be no doubt but that free competition with grocers 
gives us more sugar, and at a cheaper price, than we could hope 
to obtain if Government were to turn grocer, and take the whole 
trade into its own hands. The reason is manifest. The grocers 
have manifestly a stronger interest in doing what is fair towards the 
public, than the Government, if it were to monopolise the trade, 
could possibly have. If one grocer's sugar is found to be worse in 
quality and higher in price than that of another, he is inevitably 
ruined. He will have to give up business, he will become a bank- 
rupt, and for his wife and children there will he no refuge but the 
workhouse; but if his sugar is good and cheap, he grows rapidly 
rich, sets up his carriage, and aspires to a villa at a watering 
place. That is the reason why competition in the supply of food 
is a principle of irresistible potency, and will not brook the inter- 
ference of the Government. But what class of men, I should like- 
to know, have the same strong and personal — strong because per- 
sonal — interest in supplying the poor with schools, that the gro- 
cers have in supplying them with sugar ? None whatever. I do 
not question but that there may be individuals here and there 
throughout the kingdom anxious to devote their time and their 
m.'noy t.<» the education of the people, and there may be amongst 
VOL. ii. 16 



338 GOVERNMENT PLAN Of fil)ti(UMO!?. 

such persons a benevolent competition to do good ; but do not b<S 
imposed on; let no fallacy, however ingeniously contrived, sc 
deceive your understandings as to induce you to believe that there 
can be anything like the zealous and animating contention which 
is prompted in men's breasts by the desire of wealth or the fear of 
ruin. Competition to do good to others never sways men's minds 
so potently as the competition to enrich themselves. Would 
it not be a strange proceeding to argue for the abolition of 
the poor laws, because, forsooth, there might be here and there 
found some benevolent person who felt a Christian pleasure 
in administering to the necessities of the poor ? And yet, if the 
principle held good in one case, why should it not be applied 
to the other ? Institutions for the education of the people are on 
every ground the very description of institutions which the Govern- 
ment, as the guardians of the people's best interests, are bound to 
interfere with. This point has been powerfully put by Mr. Hume. 
I speak of Mr. David Hume. The sentiment I am about to allude 
to did not originate with the hon. Member for Montrose ; but it is 
so profound that I am sure he will have no hesitation in adopting 
it. After laying down very emphatically the general principle of non- 
interference and free competition, Mr. Hume goes on to make the 
admission that there undoubtedly may be and are some very useful 
and necessary matters which do not give that degree of advantage 
to any man that they can be safely left to individuals. Such mat- 
ters, he says, must be effected by money, or by distinctions, or by 
both. Now, Sir, if there ever was a case to which that description 
faithfully and accurately applies, I maintain that it is to the call- 
ing of the schoolmaster in England. That his calling is a neces- 
sary and an useful one, is clear; and yet it is equally clear that he 
does not obtain, and cannot obtain, adequate remuneration with- 
out an interference on the part of Government. Here, then, we 
have the precise case, if we are to adopt the illustration of Hume, 
in which the Government ought to interfere. Reasoning a prion, 



GOVERNMENT PLAN OF EDUCATION. 339 

the principle of free competition is not sufficient of itself, and can- 
not supply a good education. Let us look art the facts. What i<j 
the existing state in England ? There has, for years, been nothing 
except the principle of non-interference. If, therefore, the princi- 
ple of free competition were in reality a principle of the same 
potency in education as we all admit it to be in matters of trade, 
we ought to see education as prosperous under this system of free 
competition as trade itself is. If we could by possibility have had 
the principle of free competition fairly tried in any country, it 
would be in our own. It has been tried for a long time with per- 
fect liberty in the richest country under the heavens, and where 
the people are not unfriendly to it. If the principle of free com- 
petition could show itself sufficient, it ought to be here ; out 
schools ought to be the models of common schools ; the people 
who have been educated in them ought to show the most perfect 
intelligence ; every school ought to have its excellent little library, 
and its mechanical apparatus; and, instead of there being such a 
thing as a grown person being unable to read or to write, such an 
individual ought to be one at whom the people would stare, and 
who should be noted in the newspapers; while the schoolmaster 
ought to be as well acquainted with his important duties as the 
culler with knives, or the engineer with machinery; moreover, he 
ought to be amply remunerated, and the highest respect of the 
public ought to be extended to him. Now, is this the truth ? 
Look at the charges of the Judges, at the resolutions of the grand 
juries, anil at the reports made to every public department that 
has anything to do with education. Some facts have been adduced 
by my noble Friend ; many more might be referred to. Take the 
reports of the inspectors of prisons. In Hertford House of Correc- 
tion, out of 700 prisoners, about half were unable to read, and 
only eight could read and write well. In Maidstone gaol, out <>!' 
8,000 prisoners, 1,300 were unable to read, and only fiftv weiv 
ruble to read and write well. In Coldbath-fields, out of 8,000, it \i 



340 GOVERNMENT PLAN OF EDUCATION. 

not said that one could read and write well. If we turn from the 
reports of the inspectors of prisons to the registers of marriages, we 
find that there were nearly 130,000 couples married in the )var 
1S44, and of those more than 40,000 of the bridegrooms and 
more than 60,000 of the brides could not sign their names, but 
made their marks. Therefore one-third of the men and one half 
of die women, who are supposed to be in the prime of life, and 
who are destined to be the parents of the next generation, cannot 
sign their names. What does this imply ? The most grievous 
want of education, for many of the remainder, who have been able 
to sign their names, may have received an education which has 
had little operation on the mind ; such an education as a large 
part of those receive who are now at our day and Sunday schools. 
How many of the day-schools are nothing more than a dirty room, 
with a heap of fuel on one side, and a brood of chickens on the 
other; where the only instruments for instruction are a dog's-eared 
spelling-book and a broken slate ? And as for the masters — men 
who ought to deserve and to receive all honour, and deference, and 
encouragement, as well upon principle as from their high station, 
being men who have first educated themselves, and are then to 
educate those who are to come afterwards ; how many of these 
men are now the refuse of other callings — discarded servants, or 
ruined tradesmen ; who cannot do a sum of three ; who would not 
be able to write a common letter ; who do not know whether the 
earth is a cube or a sphere, and cannot tell whether Jerusalem is 
in Asia or America; whom no gentleman could trust with the key 
of his cellar, and no tradesman would send of a message ? Yet 
such are the men to whom you trust the mind of the rising gene- 
ration, on whom the prosperity and the future eminence o( this 
great country will depend. Let me take some evidence on this 
point which no one will dispute. Probably all the Members of 
this House will know the important position which the Congrega- 
tional Uliion holds among the Nonconformjsts. On M§v }§ f 



OOVEWNMF.XT plan of education. S4i 

1846, there is a report of the committee of the Congregational 
Union on the subject of general education, which was made to the 
union, and the mover of that report adopted its principle. That 
motion was made by Mr. Edward Baines, jun., and what 1 am 
about to read, therefore, cannot be considered as representing any 
mean opinion. I find it said — 

"If it were necessary to disclose facts to such an assembly as this, as to 
the ignorance and debasement of the neglected portions of our popula- 
tion in towns and rural districts, both adult and juvenile, it could easily be 
done. Private information communicated to the board, personal observa- 
tion tend investigation of various localities, with the published documents 
of the Registrar General, and the reports of the state of prisons in England 
and Wales, published by order of the House of Commons, would furnish 
enough to make us modest in speaking of what has been done for the hum- 
bler classes, and make us ashamed that England — the sons of the soil of Eng- 
land — should have hoen so long neglected, and should present to the 
enlightened traveller from other shores such a sad spectacle of neglected 
cultivation, lost mental power, and spiritual degradation." 

That statement perfectly agrees with all the information I have 
been able to obtain. I do believe that the state of education 
among the common people of this country ought to make us 
ashamed, and that we should present a melancholy spectacle to 
any very enlightened foreigner visiting our shores. Under these 
circumstances, what is said ? We are told that the principle of 
non-interference and of free competition will be as powerful a sti- 
mulus to education as it is to trade. Why, this morning I 
received a paper containing reasons for opposing the present 
grant; and it is said, that if we only wait with patience, the prin- 
ciple of free competition will do all that is necessary for education, 
We have been waiting with patience since the Heptarchy. How 
much longer are we to wait ? Are we to wait till 2,847, or till 
3.847 ? Will you wait till patience is exhausted ? Can you say 
that the experiment which has been tried with so little effect has 



o42 GOVERNMENT PtAN OF EDUCATiO^. 

been tried under unfavourable circumstances ? has it been tried on 
a small scale, or for a short period ? You can say none of thesi 
things ; and I defy you to show that you ought to apply to educa- 
tion the principle of free competition. That principle is not appli- 
cable. As the south of this island has furnished me with one 
argument, so the north will furnish me with another. We see 
there a people of ancient lineage, sprung from the same blood, and 
speaking with some diversities the same language; who separated 
themselves from the See of Rome at the same great emancipation 
of the human mind ; united under one Sovereign; joining in a 
series of revolts ; and then united in one Legislature and nation 
striving for the good and the welfare of both. Yet there is one 
great difference. England for many ages has been the richest and the 
most prosperous among the civilized countries of the world ; whilst 
all men know that Scotland was almost at the bottom, if not quite 
at the bottom, of nations that have known civilization. It is known 
that 150 or 200 years ago the names of Scotland and Scotchmen 
were words uttered with contempt, and that great statesmen and 
patriots looked with despair on the state of the lower orders. We 
have already heard this Session of Fletcher of Saltoun. It was at 
the end of the 1*7 th century that Fletcher of Saltoun, a brave and 
able man, who fought and suffered for libertv, was so overwhelmed 
with the spectacle of misery his country presented, that he actually 
published a pamphlet, in which he proposed the institution of per- 
sonal slavery in Scotland as the only way to compel the common 
people to work. Within two months after the appearance of the 
pamphlet of Fletcher, the Parliament of Scotland passed in 1G9G, 
t.n Act for the settlement of schools. Has the whole world given 
us such an instance of improvement as that which took place at 
the beginning of the 18th century ? In a short time, in spite of 
the inclemency of the air and the sterility of the soil, Scotland 
became a country which had no reason to envy any part of this 
world, however richly gifted by nature ; and remember that 



GOVERNMENT PLAN OF EDUCATION. 343 

Scotchmen did this, and that wherever a Scotchman went — and 
there were few places he did not go to — he carried with him signs 
of the moral and intellectual cultivation he had received. If he had 
a irhop, he had the best trade in the street; if he enlisted in the 
Army, he soon became a non-commissioned officer. Not that the 
Scotchman changed ; there was no change in the man, for a hun- 
dred years before Scotchmen of the lower classes were spoken of 
in London as you speak of the Esquimaux ; but such was the dif- 
ference when this system of State education had been in force for 
only one generation : the language of contempt was at an end, 
and that of envy succeeded. Then the complaint was, that wher 
ever the Scotchman came he got more than his share; that wnen 
he mixed with Englishmen and Irishmen, he rose as regularly to 
the top as oil rises on water. Now fe this a perfect system of 
State education? Very far from it. It was open to very grave 
objections as to its impartiality between different religious persua- 
sions. The system was open also to many other objections which 
it is not necessary to particularize ; but under this system of State 
education, whatever were its defects, Scotland rose and prospered 
to such a degree that I do Hot believe a single person, even of 
those who now most loudly proclaim their abhorrence of State 
education, would venture to say that Scotland would have become 
the free civilized country it is if the education of her people had 
been left to free competition without any interference on the part 
of the State. Then how does this argument stand ? I doubt 
whether it be possible to find, if there be any meaning in the 
science of induction as applied to politics, any instance of an expe- 
riment tried so fully and so fairly, tried with all the conditions 
which Lord Bacon has laid down in his Novum Orf/onon, and of 
which the result was so evident. Observe, you take these two 
countries so closely resembling each other in many particulars — in 
one of these two countries, by far the richer of the two, and better 
able to get on with free competition, VOW have free competition ; and 



341 GOVERNMENT PLAN OF EDUCATION. 

what is the result ? The Congregational Union tell you that it k 
a result, indeed, to make us ashamed, and every enlightened 
foreigner that comes amongst us sad. In the other country, little 
favoured by nature, you find a system of State education--not a 
perfect one, but still an efficient one — and the result is an evident 
and rapid improvement in the moral and intellectual character of 
the people, and a consequent improvement in security and in 
prosperity such as was hardly ever seen before in the world. If 
this had been the case in surgery or in chymistry, and such experi- 
ments and results had been laid before you, would it be possible for 
you not to see which was the wrong course and which the right? 
These arguments have most fully convinced me of a truth which 
I shall not shrink from proclaiming in the face of any clamour that 
may be raised against it — that it is the duty of the State to edu- 
cate the common people. And now I will refer to this Amend- 
ment ; and first, as to the money part of it. Undoubtedly, if the 
education of the people is a thing with which the State has 
nothing to do, the more money we spend the more does it become 
this House to consider the question and expediency of such expen- 
diture; but if my argument is correct, that it is the duty of the 
State to educate the people, then 1 ask, are you prepared, on 
account of a vote of a few thousands, to withhold the performance 
of that duty ? I believe that, in a strictly financial point of view 
the very utmost expense would be infinitely more than compen 
sated by the difference there would be between an educated and 
an uneducated people. I believe also that what you would be 
called upon to lay. out would be more than compensated by the 
reduced expenses of your State prosecutions, prisons, and penal 
settlements ; and I cannot believe — having never grudged anything 
that was asked to preserve the peace and protect property by 
means of inflicting pain — that you will now refuse to preserve 
order by this more beneficent means. As to the objection which 
hai been made with respect to the patronage which it is said the 



GOVERNMENT 1M.AN OF EDUCATION. 345 

Government will possess through means of the appointments, 
ask, lias my lion. Friend considered that of all the patronage — { 
will not call it patronage — of all the expenditure of the Govern- 
ment, there is no part of it under a check like that which this 
expenditure is to be placed under? There is not only a general 
check upon it, but there is also a particular check applicable to 

* 

itself alone. Not only must the Government come before us every 
year for the grant, in the same manner as with the votes for the 
Navy and the Ordnance, but when we have voted the gross sum, 
the application of the details is taken under the control, in every 
locality, of the friends of education — men who will be altogether 
independent of the Government. Before they can act, they must 
have actually contributed towards the expense, for otherwise the 
Government will contribute nothing; and when lion. Gentlemen 
talk of the Government corrupting the schoolmasters, and of this 
measure supplying them with the means of jobbing and influenc- 
ing elections, recoiled, first, that the Government does not appoint 
the schoolmasters; in the next place, the Government cannot dis- 
miss them ; in the third place, they cannot be dismissed by mana- 
gers altogether independent of the Government; in the fourth 
place, the schoolmaster will receive nothing whatever, unless 
those managers, who are altogether inde|>endent of the Govern- 
ment, report well of him, and reply that he shall receive it; and 
that can be no mere formal report, for the condition of it is that, 
having received 15/. of the public money, the managers shall 
themselves, out of their own funds, pay him 30/. a year, and find 
him a house. Now, where is there a chance of jobbing ? Suppose 
a schoolmaster who belongs to the Dissenting school of Liberal 
politicians — at Leeds I will say — had been offered (a Conservative 
Ministry being in power), if he voted for a Conservative candidate, 
the 15/.: if there was any suspicion of that, h : s Dissenting mana- 
gers would have nothing to do but withhold the report, and he 
eonld not get one farthing of it. Nay, more, if one or two large 

15* 



346 GOVERNMENT PLAN OF EDUCATION. 

subscribers, thinking anything of the sort, should withhold theii 
subscriptions, down goes the salary below 30/., and he could not 
get anything from the State. So that the whole details and appli- 
cation of this money are under the very strictest check that it is 
possible to devise — stronger than this House has ever imposed for 
any part of the estimates. I should like to know how a job can 
be done, if when a man comes and asks you to make his son an excise- 
man, you say you will make him an exciseman if he lays down 
twice the exciseman's salary. Sir, this principle, though in a dif- 
ferent form, runs through the whole of this measure. It is per- 
fectly true that no part of the salaries of the public teachers and 
stipendiary monitors will be paid by the school — at least, what 
Government grants them is not contingent on what will be paid by 
the school ; but no person can be a pupil-teacher or stipendiary moni- 
tor unless the school is kept up in conformity with the preliminary 
regulations requiring the preliminary outlay, and unless the mana- 
gers of the school make themselves responsible that during the whole 
time those pupil-teachers and stipendiary monitors shall go on, the 
master of the school shall receive the salary. Thus you will have 
the friends of education spread over the country, of all sorts, of 
all parties, and acting upon the strongest security ever devised, the 
payment of their own money. It is impossible not to see the 
absurdity of the arguments that are brought against this plan of 
the Government. We are told in the same breath that it will 
destroy all voluntary exertions, and cost 2,000,000/. a year; and 
in the paper to which I before referred I find that the gentleman 
who moved that the report be received, put those two things side 
by side. If that gentleman had taken the trouble to read the 
Minutes, he would have seen what was the proposition of th« 
Government ; and that, whilst on the one hand they leave volun 
tarv exertions untouched, on the other hand if those exertions aits 
checked, this House will not be called upon to pay one single penny 
(f wex we shall be called upon to pay 2 } 0Q0,QQQJ,, the reason will 



OOVKttNMfcXT PLAN* OF Kbt*CA«tfON. 34? 

be that the voluntary principle will haw been stimulated to the 
most, surprising degree; tor, before any such amount can be called 
for. the friends of the voluntary system throughout the country must 
be so seriously animated as to be prepared to pay no less a sum 
than 4,000,000/. I think 1 have now answered the objection with 
regard to the expenditure, and also the objection which has been 
urged on the subject of patronage. But there is another objection 
which has been urged by my hon. Friend the Member for Fins 
burv. He savs that this is a most unconstitutional proceeding or. 
the part of the Government. My hon. Friend did not, however, 
tell us what principle of the constitution it was that the Govern- 
ment had violated. He spoke, indeed, of the proposed Committee 
of Council as being a self-elected body, a self-appointed body, and 
an unconstitutional body. But this Committee of the Council is 
just as much a constitutional body as any other body of function- 
aries in the State. It is a body appointed by Her Majesty's author- 
ity, by and under the advice of her responsible and constitutional 
advisers. In no case can they be considered as self-elected. No 
one can understand how the Members of the Council can be self- 
elected any more than a Secretary of State can be self-elected. 
But what is the constitutional proceeding which my hon. Friend 
requires ? He says that we ought to have an Act of Parliament; 
but I must say that this is one of the very acts which do not call 
for any power to be conferred by Parliament. For why is an Act 
of Parliament, at any time in such a case, required ? It is in 
order to give to the Crown a power of acting which it did not 
already possess; but in this case the Crown is perfectly qualified to 
act without any Parliamentary sanction. It is quite competent 
for the Crown, as for anybody else, to do all that has been proposed 
to be done by the Committee of Privy Council ; and all that this 
House is required to do is to give the money to enable the Crown 
to carry out the plan of the Committee of the Council. Surely, 
this is acting upon a most constitutional principle. Anybody may 



'3\# no\ kuN\i,-:xr I'lan O'v' ki»(. ca :ioK. 

do all that the Council have proposed to do, provided they havd 
the money wherewith to do it. Are the acts, as proposed by 
the Minutes of Council, illegal ? Is there the slightest doubt 
that anybody might do them if they possessed the money ? May 
] not educate children — appoint stipendiary scholars — maintair 
pupil-teachers — provide monitors — make provision for schoolmas 
ters, and give to them, after years of service, pensions for the re 
mainder of their days ? All these acts are perfectly legal, and 
require no Act of Parliament to sanction them. To pass an Act 
of Parliament for such a case would be absurd. What the 
Crown wants is money. Whose province is it to give it? It is 
the business of this House. To it belongs the peculiar privilege, 
as in all analogous cases; and can there be anything more ana- 
logous than in the provisions which are made every year for the 
military schools ? It did not require an Act of Parliament to 
establish the Military Asylum at Chelsea. When L.was Secretary 
at War I proposed the establishment of a girls' school in every 
regiment,- but no Act of Parliament was required ; and why should 
th^ie be, when it was in anybody's power to have done the same 
thing ? Therefore is it, in the present case, in the power of Her 
Majesty to make these regulations for educating the people; and 
all that she requires of Parliament is the money to enable Her to 
carry out Her plans. If the Crown were to ask for money for a 
purpose which was illegal, then there must be an Act of Parlia- 
ment to sanction its appropriation. I believe this is the sound 
constitutional definition of the power both of the Crown and of 
Parliament. The next point which I am led to consider is, the 
religious objection which has been made. Now, upon that point 
I do not conceive that my hon. Friend has dealt with the argu- 
ment fairly, or has put it upon that footing which seems to me to 
be just, it appears to me utterly impossible not to admit, that as 
far as the different religious sects are concerned, the Minutes of 
1G39 j^roposed a scheme of perfect fairness. J have read the 



GO\ -KIINMKST I'LAN OF Kill CATlOK. 343 

Minutes of 1845 and 184G; but 1 speak chiefly with reference to 
the Minutes of 1839 ; and after ariviftg them the maturest consi- 
deration, I think every care has been taken to obviate the slightest 
interference on the part of the Government with the various reli- 
gious sects ; and that, as between the Church of England and the 
Protestant Dissenting bodies, it is impossible for me to conceive a 
system of stricter impartiality. Will any Gentleman say, that 
in that system or plan there is an advantage given to the mem- 
bers of the Church, which is not given to those connected with 
the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Wesleyans, and with the Church 
of Scotland ? I can find no trace of the kind. The advan- 
tage of the scheme is intended for all in common. The Dissent- 
ing ministers and managers of schools will have equal author- 
ity with the parochial minister of the Church. The boys of the 
Dissenting schools will be just as eligible to be pupil-teachers and 
monitors as those of the Church. As to the schoolmasters, there 
are exactly the same conditions imposed on the schoolmasters of the 
Church of England as upon the Dissenting schoolmasters. They 
will enjoy the same emoluments, and after a series of years of service, 
will have the same retiring pensions. I wish, instead of using phrases 
of disparagement against the scheme proposed, hon. Gentlemen 
would answer this plain question — supposing in anyone city there 
should be a school connected with the Church, another connected 
with the Wesleyans, and another with the Presbyterians — will any 
Gentleman distinctly point out to me what share of the public 
money or what patronage is that which the school connected with 
the Church will get, and which the other schools will not get ? If 
the .school connected with the Church of England, from remissness 
and mismanagement, fall below the mark, it will not, under these 
Minutes, get even those advantages which other schools will. A 
system of more impartiality in principle I am utterly unable tc 
conceive ; and I am quite convinced that it will be a system of 



850 GOVERNMENT PLAN OP EbUCATiOfr. 

perfect impartiality in practice, as respects, at least, oilr gi'ea 
cities and town districts. With respect to another objection winch 
lias been made with regard to the establishment of schools in the 
poorer districts, I admit there may be some difficulty for some time 
in supplying education to such districts; and the subject has 
engaged the most anxious thoughts of the Committee of Educa- 
tion. Doubtless, there will be an advantage for the Church in 
those places where the Dissenters are few, and the members of the 
Church many ; but in some instances the case will be reversed ; 
and when, for instance, the Presbyterians preponderate, then they 
will gain the advantage, and the Church will go without. But, 
whichever way it may be, you cannot tell me that the principle is 
unsound. If there should be 900 members of the Church in a 
given district, and only 100 Dissenters, then, indeed, the advan- 
tage would be in favour of the Church ; but, even in that case, the 
Dissenters would not be worse off than they are now. By the 
supposition, the district would support only one school, and that 
would be of the Church ; but that can be no injury to the Dissent- 
ers ; and I do Itope that the Nonconformists will remember that 
they are not so much Nonconformists as not also to be Englishmen 
and Christians. I do trust, whatever differences of opinion may 
exist as to the merits of the Minutes of the Committee of Educa- 
tion, that Baptists, Congregational Unions, Wesleyans, Presbyte- 
rians, Churchmen, and men of all creeds, will feel that they have 
a deep interest in the good education of all men. They live on 
the same soil, and have one and the same interest that the great 
body of the people should be educated. Take the case, as I said 
before, of Lord George Gordon's rabble. Was not, I ask, the 
Churchman as liable to have his property destroyed as a person 
who belonged to the Dissenting body ? Does not our common 
interest in the security of order, give us a common interest in the 
education of the people ? And I deny what the lion. Gentleman 



GOVERNMENT PLAN OF EDUCATION. 351 

the Member for Finsbury says, that you call on men to pay for an 
education from which they get no advantage. Sir, there is nc 
man contributing to the education of the people who gets nc 
advantage from it. I utterly deny it. If a Dissenter be 8iir« 
rounded by men belonging to the Church, I deny that that Dis- 
senter gains nothing by having those men made good Christians. 
1 say it is just as much a matter of common interest as the defence 
ot^ our coast ; and no particular person is entitled to say, because 
he belongs to a particular sect, that he has no interest whatever 
in, and is not bound to contribute to, the common security and 
defence of the whole nation. Now, Sir, I think I have gone over 
all the points. No; there is one other point to which the lion. 
Member alluded. The lion. Gentleman wishes to have a Select 
Committee to inquire into the effect of this education — though lie 
did not tell us what he meant by the phrase — on the Queen's sub- 
jects. In what way education was to affect their civil rights, my 
lion. Friend did not think it right to inform us. I think it can 1 »e 
hardly necessary for me to say, that to a population — such as a 
large portion of the population of England is — if the description 
given by the Congregational Union be correct, civil liberty can 
scarcely be moce than a name ; and it can hardly require a Committee 
of this House to satisfy us that an improved and extended system 
of education is a likely or a good way to carry on the war against 
liberty. And this I must say, that he is a very shortsighted friend 
of the common people who is eager to bestow upon them vast 
franchises, and yet who makes no effort to give them that educa- 
tion without which such franchises cannot be beneficial either tc 
themselves or to the State. I have done, Sir; and from the cla- 
mour which has been aroused around us, I appeal with confidence 
to the country to which, in no long time, we must render an 
account of our stewardship. And I appeal with still more confi- 
deuco to a future age, which, while enjoying all the blessings of 



352 GOVERNMENT FLAN OF EDUCATION. 

ii just and efficient system of State education, will look back with 
astonishment to the opposition which the introduction of that 
system encountered, and which will be still more astonished that 
such resistance was offered in the name of civil and religious 

freedom. 



AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL* 

june 14, 184 V. 

Sir, 1 have heard with great pleasure the Amendment proposed 
by the lion. Member for Finsbury.f I beg to assure my hon. 
Friend, that in that Amendment is set forth, with great force and 
precision, the principles which have guided, and which will con- 
tinue to guide, the conduct of Her Majesty's "Government. The 
Member* • *' fi>'' 4<n .■•> nitration feel that whenever the Government 
is, by an unfortunate necessity, compelled to depart from the gene- 
ral rule which prescribes abstinence from all interference with the 
internal concerns of foreign nations, it contracts a grave responsi- 
bility ; and it is with a full conviction of this on their minds, that 
Her Majesty's Ministers have determined to interfere in the affairs 
of Portugal, and will continue to act on the principles which have 
hitherto guided their conduct. I see with the greatest pleasure 
that my hon. Friend, and others who, like my hon. Friend, were 
at first disposed to look with jealousy on the course taken by the 
Government, have, upon examination, found sufficient cause to 
change the opinion which they originally entertained. Sir, I am 
not surprised that such jealousy should at first sight be entertained 

* Hansard, 3d Series, vol. xciii. p. 513-52G. 

f '• Great Britain having become a party to foreign armed interference 
with the view of terminating the civil war now unhappily existing in 
Portugal, it is the opinion of this House, that on tranquillity being restored, 
it will be the duty of the British Government to endeavour, by all just 
means in its power, to secure to the people of Portugal the full eujoyuieot 
pf their eonstifcytiouiil rights and privileges." 



354 AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. 

as to the proceedings of Her Majesty's Government. There eal 
be no doubt that the rule which condemns interference in the inter 
nai concerns of a foreign country is a sound general rule. There 
can be no doubt that, on the Minister who so interferes, the burdeD 
of proof is thrown to show the necessity of interference. There 
can be no doubt that he is bound to make out his case to the satis- 
faction of the public. In the present case it must be acknow- 
ledged that there are peculiar circumstances which make it one 
of great difficulty and delicacy : there can be no doubt about that. 
There can be no doubt — and this I shall acknowledge as a distinct- 
ive part of our case — that the Throne of Portugal has long been 
surrounded by evil counsellors. There can be no doubt that the. 
most violent and unconstitutional measures have been adopted by 
the Court. There can be no doubt that some acts, which I am 
compelled to designate as cruel, have disgraced the history of the 
Portuguese Government. There can be no doubt that circum- 
stances have occurred which justified the Portuguese people in re- 
ceiving with distrust the assurances of the Portuguese Government. 
And I cannot wonder, therefore, that persons who dislike inter- 
ference in general, and think interference with the international 
affairs of other nations a very bad course of policy, should look 
with peculiar jealousy at such an interference as this, of which at 
first siffht the obiect miMit seem to be to rescue a Government 
which has committed grave faults, from the peril which is the 
natural consequence of misconduct. All this I admit; yet, admit- 
ting it, I am still convinced that her Majesty's Government chose 
the least of two evils ; and under such circumstances a choice of 
evils was all that was left to it. Considering our relations with 
Portugal— considering the civil war which is raging — consider- 
ing the strong inclination to interference felt by foreign Powers, T 
bold it, Sir, to be clear that no course whatever exempt from in- 
convenience and risk was open to the British Government. Simi- 
lar cases frequently occur in public and iu private life, It comet 



AtTAtnS OP' ronftoAi.. 

witliin the daily experience of all men, that persons are frequently 
without any fault of their own, placed in situations in which the} 
must act, and in which every course they can take has its risks and 
its inconveniences. Now, it is not a fair way of reasoning to exagge- 
rate the risks and the inconveniences of the course actually adopted. 
No argument against the course taken under the circumstances is 
sound, unless he who pronounces the condemnation gives us also 
his own line of conduct, and shows us good reasons for believing 
that that line of conduct would be attended with less objectionable 
consequences than that which has been followed. And remember, 
too, that in such cases those who have to defend what has been 
done, always speak at a disadvantage. You feel the inconve- 
niences of the course which has been taken : of the course not 
taken vo~u do not feel the inconveniences. They are mere matter 
of discussion and speculation. Why, you might deny in toto that 
there was any risk of their taking place at all. But of the course 
taken, you feel and know the evils. Under these circumstances, 
then, it is that I think Government is fairly entitled to call on every 
Gentleman who is in favour of the vote of censure under discussion 
to lay before the House not only a statement of the inconve- 
niences admitted — and admitted to have arisen as inseparable from 
the interference which has taken place — but also to state to the 
House some plan of policy which would have avoided these incon- 
veniences without leading to greater. No such plan of policy has 
yet been submitted to the house ; and I doubt whether it be in the 
power of human wisdom to devise such a plan. I think that I 
see in every possible course, other than that which has been fol- 
lowed, inconveniences greater than those which have resulted from 
our policy. Sir, my argument rests upon the peculiar relations 
subsisting between England and Portugal. With many other 
Powers no such question as that which we are now discussing 
could have arisen. Suppose, for example, that a similar state of 
tiling to that of Portugal had Occurred in the kingdom of tli« 



OOt> AFFAIUS OF PORTUGAL. 

Two Sicilies, or the Grand Duchy of Tuscany — then, indeed, U 
might have been the duty of the Government to have sent a 
frigate into the Bay of Naples, in order to protect, and, if neces- 
sary, to carry away British subjects and British property ; but 
there the matter would have ended. No interference similar to 
that which has in this instance taken place, would have been the 
subject of any discussion. But our relation with Portugal is a 
most peculiar one — one without any parallel in European politics 
— without any parallel, I may say, in the history of the world 
Sir, I do not remember anything which struck me more than, 
when looking over that collection of treaties with Portugal which 
we called for — a collection extending from the days of the Black 
Prince downwards — from the year 1373, and produced, not for 
the gratification of any antiquarian curiosity, but treaties still in 
force, and in active operation — when looking over these early 
treaties of the fourteenth century, one thing, I say, most particu- 
larly struck me. It seemed as if those w r ho framed these ancient 
documents had some presentiment of the length of their existence, 
and that they would completely outlive all the arts of war then 
in use ; for to the stipulation for furnishing troops, archers, slingers, 
and galleys, to defend Portugal, contained in the first treaty with 
that country, a saving clause adds the condition, provided that 
these should be the means of defence then employed. This mav 
be fortuitous ; but has it not a singular aspect, in the middle of a 
treaty of the fourteenth century, to see such a clause as that ? 
And, in truth, there is a great analogy between the manner in 
which these treaties were observed in the fourteenth century, and 
the manner in which they are observed in the nineteenth century 
— an analogy one of the most remarkable on record. Perhaps 
the noble Lord opposite, whose studies have been not a little di- 
rected towards those interesting and curious parts of history which 
belong to the times of chivalry, will remember Froissart's glowing 
description of how — in the year 13S1 T think it was — the Por 



AFFAIRS OF l'OMTGAL. 3o7 

tuguose ambassadors appeared before the Court of London — (/ 
the splendour of the pageant — of the magnificent reception which 
greeted them — of the presence of the representatives of the two 
great families in the realm (John of Gaunt, and Edmund Langlev 
Duke of York), standing one on either side of the King — and 
how they addressed the Portuguese ambassadors — and how they 
told them to tell their fair Cousin of Portugal that what she 
wanted she should have; that Portugal was the friend of the 
friends of England, and the foe of the foes of England. And 
then, says old Froissart, the Parliament resolved that 500 archers 
and men-at-arms should be sent oft" to Portuo-al — ay, an exne- 
dition then, in the fourteenth century, just as the expedition of 
1826, though armed in a different manner, sailed to protect the 
same country from danger from the same quarter. Such a close 
alliance between nations for 500 years, is almost without prece- 
dent ; and let. me recall, in connexion with it, a striking observa- 
tion of Mr. Canning, that from the very first our treaties with Por- 
tugal had the character, not of mere formal diplomatic conven- 
tions, but that there, was a force of fervent expression about their 
which bound the two countries in a tar more kindly connexion 
Why, in the very treaty I have mentioned, we bound ourselves tc 
defend Portugal, by sea and by land, "against all who may live 
and die." Again, in 1661, the King of England "did profess and 
declare to take the interests of Portugal, and all its dominions, t 
heart, defending the same with his utmost power by sea ami 
land, even England itself." And once more, in 1*703, we con- 
firmed our former engagements, and contracted new ones to the 
same effect, in equally strong terms. Sir, there may be those who 
think that such relations as these were inexpedient for this country 
— a country so great and so powerful — to enter into. I hold, I 
confess, a different opinion. Any services we may have rendered 
to Portugal have been amply repaid. In all our contests, Portu- 
gal has ever been our friend. In the Seven Years' war, >v}iea 



AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. 



France and Spain were leagued against us — when they attempted 
to incite Portugal on the same principle to join with them and 
help to free herself and Europe from the tyrant of the seas — then 
Portugal boldly refused their proffers. And yet "t was a critical 
time for the Portuguese. The earthquake was recent-, their capi- 
tal in ruins, the king with scarcely a place to lay his head, a 
foreign army hovering on the frontier ; still Portugal kept her 
faith, and acted up to the spirit of her treaties with England. 
Again, when it would have been easy for the House of Braganza 
to have made terms with our enemies, they preferred exile across 
the Atlantic to such c violation of their engagements. And then 
the soil of Portugal became the spot from which we moved the 
world. It was in Portugal that you fought your own battles, and 
successfully defended your own liberties. For nothing was more 
(fine than that passage in the despatches of our great military Com- 
<nnander — despatches which may outlive even the popular memory 
of his victories — nothing he ever wrote was more true than that 
sentence m which he expresses his belief that the question was 
between the defence of Portugal and the invasion of England 
On tli at occasion Portugal suffered for us. By her devastation 
we were enabled to look in security upon our own cultivated fields ; 
and as for those lines of Torres Vedras, they protected against 
spoliation and massacre a larger capital and a greater population 
than that of Lisbon, or that of Portugal. When that struggle 
was ended, you renewed, at the time of the general settlement of 
Europe, the treaties and conventions under which you had already 
acted. In consequence of those engagements, in i82G, you 
promptly sent to Portugal assistance against foreign invasion ; and 
in 1834, when pretenders to the Crowns of Spain and Portugal — 
having to a great extent a common interest — made their appear- 
ance in the Peninsula, then, Sir, England took upon herself tL« 
defence of Portugal, and entered into the Quadruple Alliance 
expressly on the ground of our ancient, solemn, and special reJa- 



lions with that country. Thus, in this singular manner, are we 
bound up with a country which has now been for imuiv month* 
the theatre of a most disastrous struggle. If I be asked what the 
origin of that war was, then, Sir, T do not hesitate to say tiiat I 
believe it was caused by the acts of the Portuguese Government 
By violent and unconstitutional decrees, they banded against 
them large bodies of armed men professing to contend tor free- 
dom ; and while the principles held by the Government, on the 
one hand, tended undoubtedly to despotism ; on the other hand, 
you have opinions prevailing which as surely were incentives to 
regicide. Let it be remarked, too, that it was in the power of 
neither party effectually to control the body of its adherents. It 
was in the power of neither the Queen nor the Junta to meet on 
fair terms, whatever their inclination may have been. The Queen 
v-as held in a species of pupilage by her Ministers, who, whenever 
she was disposed to moderate, councils, threatened to resign theii 
civil offices and to lay down their military commands. Around 
the Junta had sprung up a crowd of adventurers eager for employ- 
ment, and therefore ready to discountenance every whisper <>{ 
peace. The country was uncultivated, trade was at a stand, 
British interests were sufYerino-. But durino- several months the 
English Government interfered merely by preaching conciliation ; 
by imploring the Court to act leniently and constitutionally ; and 
by impressing on the Junta counsels of moderation. It is admitted 
even b} r those who blame the conduct of the Government— it is 
admitted even by the hon. Member for Montrose — that the prin- 
ciple of non-interference had never been more ably put forward 
tli an by the papers of my noble Friend (Lord Palnierston) during 
the first months of the conflict. But they say, and he says, that 
then there came a change — that then came interference. There 
must be some mysterious cause for tin's — some strong influence, 
winch I cannot describe, cries one — some backstairs intrigue, which 
I need not particularize, says another. Now, for my own part, } 



should have been inclined to say that, on the simplest inspection 
of these papers, the reason for the change will be seen on their 
face, and cannot be mistaken. It is this — while the question wa? 
a purely internal question, the English Government interfered only 
by counsel, exhortation, and friendly offices. But it afterwards be 
came an international question, and then Government could refrain 
from interference no longer. An attentive examination of the 
despatches will show that England ceased to follow the strict course 
of non-interference when the question ceased to be an internal 
question of Portuguese politics. And 1 may ask the hon. Member 
for Montrose, however much he may be attached to the general 
principles of non-interference, whether he will not admit that 
sometimes the internal policy of a country becomes its interna- 
tional policy — and that in such a case, the general principle of 
non-interference ought to be, and is frequently suspended ? Twc 
remarkable instances of this kind have been alluded to in this 
debate. We interfered under Queen Elizabeth in France. " What," it 
may be said, " did it signify to us whether the Government of France 
or the League got the better ?" But the success of the League 
would have increased the power and the influence of the House 
of Austria, already too formidable in Europe ; while, on the other 
hand, the success of Henry TV. tended to preserve the balance of 
power against Philip of Spain, and add to the security of England. 
Thus was the principle of interference justifiable. So, again, as 
to the States General, when they interfered in our internal policy 
in 1G88. They saw safety in the predominance of the Orange 
party. If William III. were to be on the Throne of England, the 
balance of power would be preserved as against France ; but were 
James II. on the throne, he would have made England the vassal 
01 France. That circumstance took ihe case of England out of 
the general rule ; and such was the reason always advanced by 
Mie States General to justify their interference. Now if it be ad- 
mitted that the rule of non-interference ceases to apply when the 



AJftPAtttS OT I'OktttGAL. 861 

question becomes international, then certainly the rule does nc! 
apply to the present case. Is it not clear, that at the end of 
March or the beginning of April, the question of interference was 
begun to be debated by other nations ? I hold it, Sir, to be quite 
clear, that Spain did contemplate and fully resolved upon inter- 
ference. One hon. Gentleman who spoke, is unable to find out the 
slightest trace of the probability of Spanish interference. Why, 
Sir, there is the note of Mr. Bulwer of the 5th of April, 1847, 
and what does it say ? — 

" Neither," it proceeds, " ought I to conceal from you, that, although tha 
Spanish Government will be delighted that in this negotiation the represen- 
tatives of the Allied Courts, accredited at that of Her Most Faithful Majesty, 
and who signed the treaty of the Quadruple Alliance, should take part: 
yet this will not hinder, should it by any event not be possible for the Four 
Powers to agree and act upon a common and thorough understanding, 
should a case of urgent necessity occur, that the indispensable remedy 
would be applied, particularly endeavouring to do so in accordance with 
Great Britain, and to carry out the intervention in the manner and on the 
basis which might be determined on between the two Governments. I 
must, however, state to you, that in the event of a sudden crisis, during 
which the Throne of Donna Maria de Gloria might be overthrown, the 
Spanish Government could not possibly consent to such a catastrophe, and 
would act alone, and of its own accord." 

Again, there is the note of Mr. Bulwer, commenting on the lan- 
guage of M. Pacheco. What do we find in it ? Our Ambassador says, 

" I however think that M. Pacheco's real wishes are to arrive at some 
fair transaction in favour of the Queen, in concert with ourselves: that he 
has no wish to interfere at all with an armed force, and is not likely to do 
so without our concurrence. But, at the same time, I think that the means 
he will adopt for arriving at a transaction, may be too calculated to elat* the 
hopes of one of the parties, and thereby prevent its making reasonable con- 
cessions; and that, under certain circumstances, he may be disposed, and even 
compelled from the position in which he will find himself placed, to enter 
into Portugal without concert with us, and even contrary to our wishes 
and opinions." 

VOL. II. *** 



862 AtffrAiRS Of POttltTGAL. 

T say, therefore, Sir, that it is perfectly clear that an armed inter* 
ference was contemplated by the Spanish Government ; and I 
think it must also be added, that the French Government coh- 
ceived that in taking that course, the Spanish Government would 
be acting warrantably. Thus, after having laboured, while the 
question was an internal one, to settle it by good offices, advice, 
and mediation, you find that it had ceased to be an internal ques 
tion. Circumstances change — events thicken — Spain collects bet 
troops upon the frontier, and declares that in certain cases they 
shall enter Portugal. France again declares that, in her opinion, 
Spain has taken a just view of her rights. These, then, are the 
circumstances under which you have to consider what is the best 
course to adopt. But here let me ask, in what sense I am to 
understand non-interference ? Do you mean merely to rest passive, 
without intimating to other Powers that they must not interfere — ■ 
or are you to say, we shall not interfere ourselves, but we will inter- 
fere with Spain if Spain interferes with Portugal? Well, now 
compare the inconveniences of either of these courses with the 
inconveniences of that actually adopted. This is the whole ques- 
tion. Now, as to saying absolutely we shall not interfere — Spain 
and France may do so if they please — they may occupy Portugal, 
they may act just as it suits them, but we shall leave the affair 
absolutely alone: to have said that, and adopted that course of 
policy, would, I conceive, have been disgraceful to this country. 
Considering our ancient, our historic, our intimate relations with 
Portugal, such a course would have been nothing less than a com- 
plete desertion of the position England has always occupied ; and 
had we adopted it, and allowed Spanish interference to take its 
course, then that interference would unquestionably have placed 
the liberties of Portugal and the lives of the Junta in a mucl 
more hazardous position than that in which they now stand. T 
mean to say nothing disrespectful — quite the reverse — of the 
Spanish people or Government ; but certainly the observance of 



AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. 363 

leniency to the vanquished in civil strife, has not of late years 
been carried by them so far as a humane man might wish. And 
I believe that there is not a single member of the Junta or 
attached to the cause of the Junta in Portugal, who, if you 
asked him " whether — supposing an armed interference did take 
place— would you prefer as the interfering Power, Spain or 
England ?" would not answer at once " England." If it be so, 
Sir, then I conceive that the course which we have followed 
is clearly a better course than that of leaving France and Spain to 
interfere, according to their own good pleasure. But there re- 
mains still another line of alternative policy. We might have 
said, we shall not interfere ourselves, but we will interfere with 
whoever else interferes. But, Sir, would any. member of this 
House counsel us to risk a threat without being prepared to risk a 
war ? Would you tell Spain, " You shall not do what you wish 
to do. and what France thinks you are justified in doing ?" Why 
then there would be war. [" Hear !"] I am not deaf to that 
cheer — I can well conceive that there are those to whom such a 
course would have its charms. See what thirty-two years of peace 
have done for civilization, for humanity, and good government ; 
and when you compare the state of Europe during those thirty- 
two years of peace with what it was during the twenty-three years 
of war, that man, I say, incurs a grave responsibility who would 
set the first spark to the mass of combustible matter which, once 
exploded, could end in nothing but general European conflagration ; 
and whether such a war would cease in 1850, 1800, or 1870, it is 
beyond the power of the wisest man living to prognosticate. 1 
say, that unless you can show that what has been done is some- 
thing so pernicious, that to avoid it we ought to have incurred the 
risk of European war, you must admit that we have done right. I 
think die hon. Member for Finsbury talked somewhat too lightly 
of war ; but I quite agree- with him that we should not give up to 
the Queen of Portugal the head of one of the Junta, to flvoi4 



AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. 

war with all the powers of Europe. I agree with the view takeL 
by Mr. Fox, who, though the great advocate for peace, when some 
one hinted that Bonaparte might require the expulsion of the 
Bourbons from England, said — 

" I never was a friend to that family — they are a bad family ; but for the 
worst Bourbon that ever sprung from their stock I'd go to war rather than 
that England should abjure the rights of hospitality." 

I recommend no disgraceful, no injurious, no pusillanimous course ; 
but I say that if it was possible to effect any settlement which 
would be just, which would be humane, which would be favour- 
able to the liberties of Portugal, and if by so doing we could avoid 
these two evils — the infamy and degradation of giving up Portu- 
gal to the absolute disposal of Spain, and the risk of a European 
war — such a settlement it was our duty to make. The strongest 
invectives have been pronounced against the Queen of Portugal 
and the Cabral party ; but every invective against the Queen is 
the best panegyric on her conduct. Loud complaints have been 
made of the cruel and severe punishments which have been in- 
flicted on those who have taken up arms against the queen. But 
what is the first article of the conditions on which we have insisted ? 
it establishes an absolute and complete amnesty ; and if you draw 
an inference unfavourable to the humanity of the Portuguese 
Government from their having so long refused to agree to those 
terms, you should also have drawn the inference that, if they did 
agree to them, it was impossible they could refuse strictly to 
observe and execute those terms. Why was it worth their while 
to battle so long upon the subject, if they were about to make a 
promise which they knew they could break ? The Portuguese 
Government said, " We will inflict no capital punishments; but let 
us have some persons sent out to the colonies," "No," we replied, 
" we cannot consent to that." " Then," said the Portuguese Go- 
Y$rninent ? " thev shall not be consigned to a cruel and miserable 



AFFAiKS OF I'ORTUGAL. 365 

exile ; they shall not be sent to Africa ; they shall be sent to Paris ; 
they shall remain there till peace and order are restored in this 
country, and their fortunes shall be remitted to them." What was 
the answer of England? "Not one mile from the territory of 
Portugal." The Portuguese Government still asked, " Let them 
be exiled for 18 months." "No; not one." "Only for 16." 
" No ; not one." " Only for 10." " No ; not one ;" and to these 
terms we adhered to the last. Those who talk of us as having 
shown a pusillanimous desire to avoid a collision with France or 
Spain, should remember that in order to avoid any such collision, 
we would not have consented to the banishment for ten months to 
Paris of one member of the Junta. As far as respects the 
amnesty, then, I think, our case is complete. The second article 
provides that all Che unconstitutional acts of the Government shall 
be rescinded. The Junta complained, and most justly, that the 
assembling of the Cortes had been improperly delayed ; but the 
r;«*eond article of the conditions entered into by the Queen of Por- 
tugal provides, that the Cortes shall be called together at the ear- 
liest possible period. The fourth article of the conditions provides 
that no member of the Cabral party shall form part of the Govern- 
ment. [An lion. Member: How do you guarantee that?] I 
cannot conceive that you can very easily have a better guarantee 
than this, that instead of being an agreement between the Queen 
of Portugal and her subjects, this is an agreement between the 
Queen of Portugal, and England, Spain, and France, who possess 
the most undoubted power to compel the Queen of Portugal to 
observe the conditions to which she has assented. This, in my 
opinion, is a full justification of the course which has been taken 
by her Majesty's Government. I think it right to call the atten- 
tion of the House to one circumstance which has been aliuded to, 
in oider to put an end to nil misrepresentation on the subject — 
I refer to the manner in which the orders of the British Govern- 
ment were carried into effect. I do not conceive, even if the officers 



AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL. 

commanding on the station had neglected to send a proper notice 
to the authorities at Oporto of the course they intended to pursue, 
that that circumstance alone would justify any one in adopting the 
views of the hon. Member for Montrose ; but, at the same time, 
it is the duty of a Government, when the conduct of those who 
have served their country well and faithfully has been impugned, 
not to pass by the first opportunity of vindicating them. I say, 
that fuller and fairer notice never was given than was given in 
this case ; and if any person who has the means of knowing the 
circumstances denies this statement, I will only say that I think lie 
cannot deny it conscientiously. The following is a letter written 
by Captain Robb, of the Gladiator, to the Secretary of the Junta 
for Foreign Affairs : — 

"His Excellency Senor Jose Passos, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Pro- 
visional Government, Oporto, Her Majesty's ship Gladiator, May 23, 1847. 
— Sir : Having transmitted to your Excellency, through Her Britannic 
Majesty's Consul at this place, the wishes of Her Britannic Majesty's Min- 
ister at Lisbon, relative to the cessation of hostilities, until the delivery 
of the letter with which I am charged to his Excellency the Conde das 
Antas, and having received no reply to that letter, 1 have the honour to 
acquaint you that I am commanded by Vice- Admiral Sir William Parker, 
Bart., G.C.B., that if any demonstration is made on the part of the naval 
force of the Junta for quitting the Douro, to warn the Junta of the pro- 
bability of their being stopped by a British force wherever it may be met 
with. — I have the honour to be, <fec, 

(Signed) "John Robb, Captain." 

Senor Jose de Passos, in his answer, says — 

" It is, therefore, that the undersigned saw with great regret that you 
declare, in conformity with the orders of his Excellency Admiral William 
Parker, that in case of the ships of the national squadron leaving the port, 
they will probably be detained by a British naval force." 

Under these circumstances, I defy any person to say that as full 
and fair warning as could be given was not afforded to the Junta. 
I have now really nothing further to say than to thank the Bousq 



AFFAIRS OP PORTUGAL. 3^7 

for their indulgence. I may, however, shortly sum up the case 
thus :-I say it was utterly impossible for us, related to and con- 
nected with Portugal as we are, to observe the ordinary rule of 
non-interference; for, the moment that France and Spain had 
shown an inclination to interfere, if we had not interfered, and if 
we had not at the same time suffered them to interfere, we should 
have lowered England to the very bottom of the scale of nations 
If we had not interfered, but had declared that we would go to 
war with France or Spain if they interfered, we should, in my 
opinion, have taken upon ourselves a most terrible responsibility 
and we imVht not impossibly have plunged Europe into a general 
war. Nothing remained but to interfere boldly, justlv, humanely 
and W1 th a desire for peace. I defy any one to read the articles 
to winch the Queen of Portugal has assented, and to sav that 
tins has not been the character of our interference. There were 
three objects, almost incompatible with each other, which we had 
it possible to maintain, and to maintain in such a way that by main- 
taming one we should not run the least hazard of not maintaining 
the others-the dignity of England, the liberty of Portugal, and 
the peace of Europe. We saw only one way of maintaining these 
objects. If our policy was right, T think there will be little dis- 
pute about the manner in which it has been carried into execution 
It w,ll scarcely be doubted that the means were adapted to the 
end, and thai the instruments were sufficiently well chosen I 
can only repeat to my hon. Friend (Mr. T. Duncon.be) that we 
feel with him that the interference we have been compelled to 
adopt, does lay upon us the duty so emphatically set forth in the 
Amendment he has moved ; and I will only add that our con- 
sciences acquit us-and I hope the vote of this House will acquit 
us-ot havmg, in this most difficult and embarrassing conjuncture 
faded m any part of our duty towards England, towards Portugal 
or towards Europe. 



SPEECH ON THE HUSTINGS AT EDINBURGH.* 

july 29, 1847. 

Mr. Macaulay came forward to address the meeting, and was 
received with prolonged cheers and hisses. He said : I have lately 
to a large number of the electors of Edinburgh so fully explained 
my recent conduct, and the principles on which I offer myself here 
as a candidate, that I should not feel myself justified in long detain- 
ing you upon the present occasion. I will therefore attempt to 
confine the observations which I have to make to a topic to which 
great prominence has been given, both in the addresses which have 
been put forth by the very respectable gentlemen who stand on 
the other side of the sheriff, and also in the speeches of those who 
have this day recommended them to your choice. I imagine from 
all that I have been able to learn, that on most political questions 
Mr. Blackburn, of whom I desire to speak with all personal respect, 
would differ, if anything, more widely from my other respectable 
opponent than from me. (Laughter.) But on one point I find a 
perfect agreement between them. There is one recommendation 
they have in common, and there is one objection in common to 
myself and my hon. friend (Mr. Craig). The principle on which 
they both ask your suffrages is this, that it is not desirable that 
this great community should be represented in Parliament by a 
Minister of the Crown. (A voice, " It is not.") Permit me, without 
dwelling on any personal pretensions of my own, avoiding as far as 
is possible all egotism, to request you as an assemblage of electors 
of a city universally allowed to be one of the most enlightened of the 

* London Times, July 31, 1847. 



HUSTINGS AT EDINBURGH. 360 

British Empire— (A voice, " Don't spread the butter so thick *') — 
calmly to inquire whether that doctrine can be maintained. There 
have been times in which undoubtedly it was true the service of 
the Crown was incompatible with the service of the people. There 
have been times in which — I speak of those times while the con- 
stitution was still taking its form, of those times which preceded the 
settlement made at the Revolution, when undoubtedly it was not 
for the interests of any great community to confide the care of its 
welfare in Parliament to any person in the service of the Crown. 
In those times the Sovereign and the House of Commons were 
enemies. Their whole existence was an existence of constant war. 
The Crown supported favourites against the voice of the Commons. 
The Commons withheld from the Crown the supplies necessary 
for carrying on the administration of government. The great 
object of the Ilouse of Commons was to obtain some concessions 
from the Crown in respect to its prerogative in return for doling 
out the supplies. The object of the Crown was to cheat the Com- 
mons out of their money, and then to hurry Parliament to an end 
with the view of governing the country for several years without 
a Parliament at all. The effects of those differences between the 
Executive and the House of Commons were weakness in the 
Commons, internal disorder, and the humiliation of the nation in 
the eyes of foreign powers. At length happier times arrived, and 
the different powers which had contended were brought into har- 
mony. The Crown was placed under such restrictions that it 
became impossible for any Ministry, not supported by the House of 
Commons, to hold office for more than a few weeks. During a 
long course of time no person can be a Minister of the Crown 
unless the people, speaking by their representatives, approve of the 
genera! conduct of the Administration. From the time that that 
became the case ; from the time that the Sovereign began to pro- 
ceed on the principle of constantly administering the Government 

in conformity with the views of the representatives of the people, 

16* 



370 ittJSTlXGS At EDlNfcURGfl. 

and of entrusting power to those only in whom the representatives 
Gf the people placed confidence — (interruption, and cries of " Ques- 
tion, question ") ; am I not speaking to the question ? (Cheers.) 
What charge has been made against me this day ? (Hear, hear.) 
Are the qualities which should recommend men to the favour of 
the Executive Government distinct from those which should recom- 
mend them to his constituents ? When I hear it made a reproach 
to this great city that it has been represented by Lord Jeftery 
(cheers), Lord Dunfermline (applause), and Lord Campbell (cheers 
and laughter) ; when I hear it made a reproach to you, and see it 
held up as a disgrace from which you should free yourselves, that 
the men on whom your choice fell were the men whom the Sove- 
reign, by the approbation of the representative body of the people, 
repeatedly called to situations of the highest trust, then I say that 
those who so instruct you teach you most destructive doctrine. 
(Cheers and groans.) If your representative be an honest man (a 
voice, " Ay, but he's not that") his power to serve you as a Minis- 
ter of the Crown is greater than his power as a private member of 
Parliament ; and I believe that you will admit, that if he is not 
an honest man, in office or out of office he is certain to betray you. 
Don't imagine it is only official men who are under corrupt influ- 
ence. (Cheers.) Rely on it that if you send mercenary men to 
Parliament— and when I say this I beg to say that I mean to con- 
vey no imputation on either of my opponents (hisses and confusion) 
— but if you send mercenary men to Parliament, in or out of 
office, for some price and to some customer they will manage to 
sell themselves and to sell you. (Applause.) I firmly believe that 
the hon. gentlemen who are on the other side of the sheriff are as 
incapable of so betraying your trust as I am ; but I am certain not 
more so. But this I say, that if it be your pleasure to send, for 
example, Mr. Blackburn instead of myself to the House of Com- 
mons — if he should, as in that case 1 heartily hope he will, prove 
himself deserving in every way of your confidence ; if he should, 



HUSTINGS AT EDINBURGH. 37 1 

as he may — for lie is as yet an untried man in public life — show 
considerable talent for debate, considerable talent for business ; it 
he should obtain the ear of Parliament — if he should obtain the 
confidence of the whole of Parliament, and prove that he U 
possessed of ability to transact and clearness to explain business — 
ir' in consequence of a revolution in political affairs those with 
whom he is nearly connected in opinion should come into power, 
and if they should say to him, " We think your ability such as 
may be of use to the state as Secretary at War, or President of the 
Board of Trade" (cries of " Oh, oh," and groans) ; if, I say, all this 
should happen, then I should consider it as a most monstrous injus- 
tice to say that, because he had thus signally vindicated your 
choice, and because a Ministry, who must be supported by the 
great body of the representatives of the empire, conceived him to 
be a man who might be useful to his country in high places, you 
should therefore withdraw the trust which you have reposed in 
him. (Cheers and uproar.) I am now, perhaps, addressing you 
for the last time (cries of " No, no," " Yes, yes," " We hope so ") ; 
some indulgence is shown to the last speeches even of convicted 
criminals. (Laughter.) I have, therefore, only to say, that to 
your decision, whatever it may be, I shall submit respectfully and 
without repining, that I shall retain a grateful sense of your past 
kindness, and that I only wish your decision may be one of which, 
when the irritation of the moment is past, and when you calmly 
review the whole history of the relation which has existed between 
us, you may conscientiously approve. (Cheers and hisses.) 

[At the close of the poll the next day, the election unexpectedly termi- 
nated in the defeat of Mr. Mncaulay by Mr. Charles Cowan. The following 
were the closing remarks of Mr. Macaulay on the occasion : — ]* 

Mr. Macau lay, on presenting himself, was received with the most 
sntbusiastic plaudits. He said — I could have wished tb*» the 

* London Times, August 2, 1847. 



372 HUSTINGS AT EDINBURGH. 

excitement about the contest had terminated with the contest itself. 
I once did believe, and from what I have seen either of English or 
Scotch communities I was entitled to believe, that there existed 
none where any person would have made his appearance for the 
mere purpose of hissing the defeated candidate. (" Hoar, hear,*" 
and cries of " He was a supporter of Mr. Cowan, who had no right 
to be here.") Gentlemen, I stand before you defeated, but neither 
degraded nor dispirited. (Cheers.) Our political connexion has 
terminated for ever. (Cries of " No, no," and great sensation.) If 
ever I return, and I hope often to return to your city, it will be 
solely for the purpose of seeing the most beautiful of British cities, 
and of meeting in private intercourse some of those valued friends 
whose regard, I hope, will survive our political separation. 
(Cheers.) To those who have constantly and kindly supported 
me I return my hearty thanks. If there was anything to be for- 
gotten or forgiven, I have forgotten and forgiven it ; and I will 
carry with me into private life a lasting and grateful recollection 
of your generous confidence, disturbed at last by causes to which 
I will not now refer. (Cheers.) But it is my belief that hereafter, 
when more calmly you review the history of our connexion, you 
will admit that I at least meant and endeavoured well. (Great 
applause.) 



tXA JGURATIOtt OF MR. MACAULAY AS LORD RECTOR 
OF GLASGOW UNIVERSITY* 

MARCH 21, 1849. 

On Wednesday the Right Hon. T. V>. Macaulay was installed as 
Lord Rector of Glasgow University in the Common-hall of the 
college. The Principal, Professors, and several strangers, including 
Lord Belhaven, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, &c, were present. 
The galleries were filled by ladies. The new Lord Rector spoke 
as follows : — 

My first duty, gentlemen, is to return you my thanks for the 
honour which you have conferred on me. You well know that it 
was wholly unsolicited ; and I can assure you that it was wholly 
unexpected. I may add, that if I had been invited to become a 
candidate for your suffrages, I should respectfully have declined 
the invitation. My predecessor, whom I am so happy as to be 
able to call my friend, declared from this place last year, in lan- 
guage which well became him, that he should not have voluntarily 
come forward to displace so eminent a statesman as Lord John 
Russell. I can with equal truth affirm that I should not have 
voluntarily come forward to displace so estimable a gentleman, and 
so accomplished a scholar, as Colonel Mure. But Colonel Mure 
felt last year that it was not for him, and I now feel that it is not 
for me, to question the propriety of your decision on a point of 
which, by the constitution of your body, you are the judges. I 
therefore gratefully accept the office to which I have been called, 
fully purposing to use whatever powers belong to it with a single 

* London Tiruefl, March 28, 1849. 



si74 txArornATtoS' as lord RKCiott. 

view to tlie welfare and credit of your society. I am not Using ft 
mere phrase of course, when I say that the feelings with which I 
bear a part in the ceremony of this day are such as I find it 
difficult to utter in words. I do not think it strange that when 
that great master of eloquence, Edmund Burke, stood where I now 
stand, he faltered and remained mute. Doubtless the multitude 
of thoughts which rushed into his mind, was such as even he could 
not easily arrange or express. In truth, there are few spectacles 
move striking or affecting than that which a great historical place 
of education presents on a solemn public day. There is something 
strangely interesting in the contrast between the venerable 
antiquity of the body, and the fresh and ardent youth of the great 
majority of the members. Recollections and hopes crowd upon 
us together. The past and the future are at once brought close to 
us. Our thoughts wander back to the time when the foundations 
of this ancient building were laid, and forward to the time when 
those whom it is our office to guide and to teach will be the guides 
and teachers of our posterity. On the present occasion we may, 
with peculiar propriety, give such thoughts their course. For it 
lias chanced that my magistracy has fallen in a great secular epoch. 
This is the 400th year of the existence of your University. (Cheers.) 
At such jubilees as these — jubilees of which no individual sees more 
than one — it is natural, and it is good, that a society like this, a 
society which survives all the transitory parts of which it is com- 
posed — a society which has a corporate existence and a perpetual 
succession, should review its annals, should retrace the stages of its 
growth from infancy to maturity, and should try to find, in the 
experience of generations which have passed away, /essons which 
may be profitable to generations yet unborn. The retrospect is 
full of interest and instruction. Perhaps it may be doubted 
whether, since the Christian era, there has been any point of time 
more important to the higher interests of mankind than that at 
which the existence of vour University commenced. It was the 



IX A I . DURATION AS LORD RECTOR. 376 

moment of a great destruction and of a great creation. Your 
society was instituted just before the empire of the East perished ; 
that strange empire, which, dragging on a languid life through the 
great age of darkness, connected together the two great ages of 
light; that empire which, adding nothing to our stores of know- 
ledge, and producing not one man great in letters, in science, or 
in art, yet preserved, in the midst of barbarism, those master- 
pieces of Attic genius which the highest minds still contemplate, 
and long will contemplate, with admiring despair. And, at that 
very time, while the fanatical Moslem were plundering the churches 
and palaces of Constantinople, breaking in pieces Grecian sculpture, 
and giving to the flames piles of Grecian eloquence, a few humble 
German artisans, who little knew that they were calling into 
existence a power far mightier than that of the victorious Sultan, 
were busied ia cutting and setting the first types. The University 
came into existence just in time to see the last trace of the Roman 
Empire disappear, and to see the earliest printed book. At this 
conjuncture — a conjuncture of unrivalled interest in the history of 
letters — a man never to be mentioned without reverence by every 
lover of letters, held the highest place in Europe. Our just 
attachment to that Protestant faith to which our country owes so 
much must not prevent us from paying the tribute which,- on this 
occasion and in this place, justice and gratitude demand, to the 
founder of the University of Glasgow, the greatest of the revivers 
of learning, Pope Nicholas the Fifth. He had sprung from the 
common people; but his abilities and his erudition had early 
attracted the notice of the great. He had studied much and 
travelled far. He had visited Britain, which, in wealth and 
refinement, was to his native Tuscany what the back settlements 
of America now are to Britain. He had lived with the merchant 
princes of Florence, those men who first ennobled trade by making 
trade the ally of philosophy, of eloquence, and of taste. It wi-.s 
Le wlio, under the protection of the munificent and discerning 



376 INAUGURATION AS LORD RECTOR. 

Cosmo, arrayed the first public library that modern Europe 
possessed. From privacy your founder rose to a throne ; but on 
the throne he never fora'ot the studies which had been his delight 
in privacy. lie was the centre of aa illustrious group composed 
partly of the last great scholars of Greece, and partly of the first 
great scholars of Italy, Theodore Gaza and George of Trebizond, 
Bessarin and Tilelfo, Marsilio Ficino and Poggio Bracciolini. By 
him was founded the Vatican library, then and long after the most 
precious and the most extensive collection of books in the world. 
By him were carefully preserved the most valuable intellectual 
treasures which had been snatched from the wreck of the Byzan- 
tine empire. His agents were to be found everywhere — in the 
bazaars of the furthest East, in the monasteries of the furthest 
"West — purchasing and copying worm-eaten parchments, on which 
were traced words worthy of immortality. Under his patronage 
were prepared accurate Latin versions of many precious remains 
of Greek poets and philosophers. But no department of literature 
owes so much to hirn as history. By him were introduced to the 
knowledge of Western Europe two great and unrivalled models 
of historical composition, the work of Herodotus and the work of 
Thucydides. By him, too, our ancestors were first made acquainted 
with the graceful and lucid simplicity of Xenophon and with the 
manly good sense of Poly bi us. It was while he was occupied with 
cares like these that his attention was called to the intellectual 
wants of this region — a region now swarming with population, 
rich with culture, and resounding with the clang of machinery — a 
region which now sends forth fleets laden with its admirable fabrics 
to lands of which in \\\> days no geographer had ever heard — then 
a wild, a poor, a half-barbarous tract, lying in the utmost verge of 
the known world. He gave his sanction to the plan of establish- 
ing a University at Glasgow, and bestowed on the new seat of 
•earning all the privileges which belonged to the University of 
Bologna. I can conceive that a pitying smile passed oVer his face 



INAUGURATION AS LOUD RECTOR. 311 

as he named Bologna and Glasgow together. At Bologna he had 
long studied. No spot in the world had been more favoured by 
nature or by art. The suirounding country was a fruitful and 
sunny country, a country of cornfields and vineyards. In the city 
the house of Bentivoglio bore rule — a house which vied with the 
Medici in taste and magnificence — which has left to posterity 
noble palaces and temples, and which gave a splendid patronage 
to arts and letters. Glasgow he just knew to be poor, a small, 
rude town, and, as he would have thought, not likely ever to be 
otherwise, for the soil, compared with the rich country at the foot 
of the Apeunines, was barren, and the climate was such that an 
Italian shuddered at the thought of it. But it is not on the fertility 
of the soil — it is not on the mildness of the atmosphere that the 
prosperity of nations chiefly depends. (Cheers.) Slavery and 
superstition can make Campania a land of beggars, and can change 
the plain of Enna into a desert. Nor is it beyond the power of 
human intelligence and energy, developed by civil and spiritual 
freedom, to turn sterile rocks and pestilential marshes into cities 
and gardens. Enlightened as your founder was, he little knew 
that he himself was a chief agent in a great revolution — physical 
and moral, political and religious — in a revolution destined to 
make the last first and the first last — in a revolution destined to 
invert the relative positions of Glasgow and Bologna. We cannot, 
I think, better employ a few minutes than in reviewing the stages 
of this change in human affairs. The review shall be short. 
Indeed, I cannot do better than pass rapidly from century to 
century. Look at the world, then, a hundred years after the seal 
of Nicholas had been affixed to the instrument which called your 
college into existence. We find Europe — we find Scotland especi- 
ally — in the agonies of that great revolution which we emphatically 
call the Reformation. The liberal patronage which Nicholas, add 
men like Nicholas, had given to. learning, and of which tlia 
establishment of this seat of learning is not the least rewarkablg 



378 INAUGURATION AS LORD RECTOR. 

instancy had produced an effect which they had never contem 
plated. Ignorance was the talisman on which their power 
depended, and that talisman they had themselves broken. They 
had called in knowledge as a handmaid to decorate superstition, 
and their error produced its natural effect. I need not tell you 
what a part the votaries of classical learning, and especially of 
Greek learning, the Humanists, as they were then called, bore in 
the great movement against spiritual tyranny. Jn a Scotch 
university, 1 need hardly mention the names of Knox, of Buchanan, 
of Melville, of Maitland, of Lethington. (Applause.) They 
formed, in fact, the vanguard of that movement. Every one of 
the chief Reformers — I do not at this moment remember a single 
exception — was a Humanist. Every eminent Humanist in the 
north of Europe was, according to the measure of his uprightness 
and courage, a Reformer. In truth, minds daily nourished with 
the best literature of Greece and Rome, necessarily grew too 
strong to be trammelled by the cobwebs of the scholastic divinity ; 
and the -influence of such minds was now rapidly felt by the whole 
community, for the invention of printing had brought books 
within the reach even of yeomen and of artisans. From the 
Mediterranean to the Frozen Sea, therefore, the public mind was 
everywhere in a ferment, and nowhere was the ferment greater 
than in Scotland. It was in the midst of martyrdoms and pro- 
scriptions, in the midst of a war between power and truth, that 
the first century of the existence of your University closed. Pass 
another 100 years, and we are in the midst of another revolution. 
The war between Popery and Protestantism had, in this island, 
been terminated by the victory of Protestantism ; but from that 
war another war had sprung — the war between Prelacy and 
Puritanism, The hostile religious sects were allied, intermingled, 
confounded with hostile political parties. The monarchical element 
of the constitution was an object of almost exclusive devotion to the 
Jftelfttist. The popular eiepae^ of the constitution, was especially 



tKA'UGC RATIOS AS LORD RECTOR. 379 

dear to the Funtaft. At length an appeal was made to the sword. 
Puritanism triumphed ; but Puritanism was already divided 
against itself. Independency and Republicanism were on one 
side — Presbyterianism and limited Monarchy on the other. It 
was in the very darkest part of that dark time — it was in the 
midst of battles, sieges, and executions — it was when the whole 
world was still aghast at the awful spectacle of a British Kirg 
standing before a judgment-seat, and laying his neck on a block — 
it was when the mangled remains of the Duke of Hamilton had 
just been laid in the tomb of his house — it was when the head of 
the Marquis of Montrose had just been fixed on the Tolbooth of 
Edinburgh, that your university completed her second century. 
A hundred years more, and we have at length reached the 
beginning of a happier period. Our civil and religious liberties 
had indeed been bought with a fearful price. But they had been 
bought; the price had been paid: the last battle had been fought 
on British ground ; the last black scaffold had been set up on 
Tower Hill. The evil days were over. A bright and tranquil 
century — a century of religious toleration, of domestic peace, of 
temperate freedom, of equal justice — was beginning. That century 
is now closing. When we compare it with any equally long 
period in the history of any other great society, we shall find 
abundant cause for thankfulness to the Giver of all good ; nor is 
there any place in the whole kingdom better fitted to excite this 
feeling than the place where we are now assembled. For in the 
whole kingdom we shall find no district in which the progress of 
trade, of manufactures, of wealth, and of the arts of life, has been 
more rapid than in Clydesdale, Your university has partaken 
largely of the prosperity of this city and of the surrounding region. 
The security, the tranquillity, the liberty, which have been pro- 
pitious to the industry of the merchant and of the manufacturer, 
have been also propitious to the industry of the scholar. To the 
last century belong most of the names of which you justly boast, 



380 INAUGURATION AS LORD RECTOR. 

The time would fail me if I attempted to do justice to the memory 
of all the illustrious men who, during that period, taught or learned 
wisdom within these ancient walls — geometricians, anatomists, 
jurists, philologists, metaphysicians, poets — Simpson and Hunter, 
Miller and Young, Reid and Stuart ; Campbell — (cheers) — whose 
coffin was lately borne to a grave in that renowned transept which 
contains the dust of Chaucer, of Spenser, and of Dryden ; Black, 
whose discoveries form an era in the history of chymical science ; 
Adam Smith, the greatest of all the masters of political science ; 
eJames Watt, who perhaps did more than any single man has 
done since the New Atlantis of Bacon was written, to accomplish 
that glorious prophecy. We now speak the language of humility 
when we say that the University of Glasgow need not fear a 
comparison with the University of Bologna. Another secular 
period is now about to commence. There is no lack of alarmists, 
who will tell you that it is about to commence under evil auspices. 
But from me you must expect no such gloomy prognostications. 
I am too much used to them to be scared by them. Ever since I 
began to make observations on the state of my country, I have 
been seeing nothing but growth, and I have been hearing of 
nothing but decay. The more I contemplate our noble institutions, 
the more convinced I am that they are sound at heart, that they 
have nothing of age but its dignity, and that their strength is still 
the strength of youth. The hurricane which has recently over- 
thrown so much that was great and that seemed durable has only 
proved their solidity. They still stand, august and immovable! 
while dynasties and churches are lying in heaps of ruin all around 
us. I see no reason to doubt that, by the blessing of God on a 
wise and temperate policy, on a policy of which the principle is to 
preserve what is good by reforming in time what is evil, our civil 
institutions may be preserved unimpaired to a late posterity, and 
that, under the shade of our civil institutions, our academical 
institutions may long continue to flourish. I trust, therefore, that 



IXACGt RATION AS LOKD RKCTOft. 381 

when a hundred years more have run out, this ancient college will 
still continue to deserve well of our country and of mankind. I 
trust that the installation of 1949 will be attended by a still greater 
assembly of students than I have the happiness now to see before 
me. That assemblage, indeed, may not meet in the piaee wnere 
we have met. These venerable halls may have disappeared. My 
successor may speak to your successors in a more stately edifice, 
in an edifice which, even among the magnificent buildings of the 
future Glasgow, will still be admired as a fine specimen of th« 
architecture which flourished in the days of the good Queen 
Victoria. (Cheers.) But though the site and the walls may be 
new, the spirit of the institution will, I hope, be still the same. 
My successor will, I hope, be able to boast that the fifth century 
of the university has been even more glorious than the fourth. 
He will be able to vindicate that boast by citing a long list of 
eminent men, great masters of experimental science, of ancient 
learning, of our native eloquence, ornaments of the senate, the 
pulpit, and the bar. lie will, I hope, mention with high honour 
some of my young friends who now hear me ; and he will, I also 
hope, be able to add that their talents and learning were not 
wasted on selfish or ignoble objects, but were employed to promote 
the physical and moral good of their species, to extend the empire 
of man over the material world, to defend the cause of civil and 
religious liberty against tyrants and bigots, and to defend the cause 
of virtue and order against the enemies of all divine and human 
laws. (Cheers.) I have now given utterance to a part, and a 
part only, of the recollections and anticipations of which on this 
solemn occasion my mind is full. I again thank you for the 
honour you have bestowed on me, and I assure you that while I 
live I shall never cease to take a deep interest in the welfare and 
fame of the body with which by your kindness I have this day 
become connected. 



MR. MAOAULAY'S ADDRESS IN EDINBURGH ON 1113 
RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT * 

nov. 2, 1852. 

UN Tuesday afternoon Mr. Macaulay addressed the electors oi 
Edinburgh for the first time since his election in July last. It 
will be remembered that the right lion. Gentleman was on that 
occasion elected in his absence, and without his solicitation, and 
that, on receiving intimation of that gratifying fact, he promised 
to appear among the electors in a few days and thank them for 
their kindness. The 30th of July was, indeed, fixed for the 
meeting, but, in consequence of a fresh attack of the illness under 
which he had for some time been suffering (bronchitis, we believe), 
it was found necessary to postpone his visit till his health would 
enable him to undertake the journey. Tuesday last was at 
length named as the day on which he should deliver the promised 
address, and the right ban. Gentioinan arrived in Edinburgh for 
that purpose on Saturday night by the express-train from London, 
The meeting took place in the Music-hall, the doors of which were 
thrown open as early as 12 o'clock for the admission of those who 
were provided with tickets, but it was half-past 12 before the 
general public were admitted. In a few minutes thereafter the 
hall was filled almost to suffocation, a large crowd having been 
waiting outside for some time previous. About 300 ladies were 
accommodated with scats in the orchestra. Precisely at one 
o'clock Mr. Macaulay entered the hall, accompanied by a large 
number of his friends, and was received with immense applause. 
He looked pale and thin, and was evidently affected by tb$ 

* From the Report of the Times. Nov. 4. 



RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT. 383 

warmth and cordiality of his reception. Among those wlui 
accompanied him we observed the Right lion. Henry Tufnell. 
M. P., Sir William Gibson Craig, Mr. Charles Cowan, M. P., Mr. 
James MoncreirT, M. P., Mr. A. Ilastie, M. P. (Paisley), Mr. J 
Fergus, M. P., Mr. Edward Ilorsman, Mr. Adam Black, ifec. 

Sir W. G. Craig proposed that Mr. Black should take the chair, 
which was at once agreed to by acclamation. 

The Chairman congratulated the meeting upon having the plea- 
sure of once more seeing in the midst of them their highly 
esteemed Representative ; but, while he congratulated them, he 
was not without misgivings that they had not acted with perfect 
prudence in asking him to visit them at this time, although be 
(Mr. Macaulay) was himself desirous of the opportunity personally 
of returning his thanks to them for the honour they had done 
him in electing him as their representative in Parliament in h>s 
absence. He (the Chairman) was persuaded that the citizens of 
Edinburgh would a thousand times rather be disappointed of the 
pleasure of seeing him and hearing him, than that they should be 
the cause in the smallest degree of injuring a health so valuable to 
the country and to the civilized world. (Loud cheers.) And lie 
was sure that, however much they might rejoice in hearing his 
views on questions of importance at the present time, there was not 
one among them who would be the occasion of causing him more 
exertion, or more anxiety, than he could easily undergo, lie 
would not detain the meeting longer, as he knew how anxious 
they all were to hear the right hon. Gentleman, and therefore it 
was with the greatest pleasure that he now asked Mr. Macaulay to 
address them. 

Mk. Macallav then stood up, and was received with a double 
round of the most enthusiastic applause. When the cheering had 
subsided, he said, — Gentlemen, I thank you from ray heart for 
this kind reception. In truth, it has almost overcome me. [The 
right hop. Gentleman seemed at this moment, and for some minutes 



RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT. 

afterwards, to be labouring under considerable emotion.] You! 
good opinion and your good will were always very valuable to 
me — more valuable by far than any vulgar object of ambition 
—more valuable than any office, however lucrative or dignified. 
In truth, no office, however lucrative or dignified, would have 
tempted me to do what I have done at your summons — to leave 
again the happiest and most tranquil of all retreats for the bustle 
of political life. But the honour which you have conferred upon 
me— an honour of which the greatest men might well be proud, an 
honour such as it is in the power only of a free people to bestow 
— laid on me such an obligation that I should have thought it 
ingratitude, I should have thought it pusillanimity not to make it 
at least an honour to serve you. (Great applause.) And here, 
Gentlemen, here we have met again in kindness after long sepa- 
ration. It is more than five years since I stood in this very 
place. A large part of human life. There are few of us on whom 
tnese five years have not set their mark, few circles from which 
tnese five years have not taken away what can never be replaced. 
Even in this multitude of friendly faces I look in vain for some 
which would on this day have been lighted up with joy and kind- 
ness. I miss one honourable man, who, before I was born, in evil 
limes, in times of oppression and of corruption, had adhered, 
with almost solitary fidelity, to the cause of freedom, and whom 
1 knew in advanced age, but still in the full vigour of mind and 
body, enjoying the respect and gratitude of his fellow-citizens. 
(Hear, hear.) I should, indeed, be most ungrateful if I could, on 
this day, forget Sir J. Gibson Craig. (Hear, hear.) LTis public 
spirit, his judicious counsel, and his fatherly kindness to myself, 
and Lord Jeffrey too. (Hear, hear.) With what effusion of gene- 
tous affection he would, on this day, have welcomed me to Edin- 
burgh ! He too is gone ; but the remembrance of him is one of 
the many ties which bind me to the city which he loved, and with 
which Ks fame is * inseparably associated. But, gentlemen, it is 



R2-BLECT10K TO PARLIAMENT. 385 

not only here that, on entering again at your call on a course of 
life which I had believed I had quitted forever, I shall be painfully 
reminded of the changes which the last live years have produced. 
In Parliament I shall look in vain for virtues which I loved, and 
abilities I a Imbed. Often in debate, and never more than when 
we discussed questions of colonial policy, which are every day 
acquiring a new interest, I shall remember with regret how much 
eloquence and wit, how much acuteness and knowledge, how many 
engaging qualities, how many fair hopes, are buried in the gravn 
of poor Charles Bullcr. (Hear.) There were other men, men 
with whom I had no party and little personal connexion, men to 
whom I was, during a great part of public life, honestly opposed, 
but of whom I cannot now think without grieving that their wis- 
dom, their experience, and the weight of their great names can 
never more in the hour of need bring help to the nation or to the 
throne. Such were two eminent men whom I left at the height, 
the one of civil and the other of milita/y fame- -the one the 
oracle of the Ilouse of Commons, the other the or'Acle of the 
House of Lords. (Ileal, hear.) There were parts c'f their long 
public life, which they themselves, I am persuaded, on a calm 
retrospect, would have allowed to have been censu'-ablo ; but it is 
impossible to deny that each in his own department saved tht- 
State — that the one brought to a triumphant close the most 
formidable conflict in which this country was ever engaged against 
a foreign enemy, and that the other, at the sacrifice — the immense 
sacrifice — of personal feeling and personal ambition, freed us from 
an odious monopoly, which could not have existed many years 
longer without producing most fearful intestine discords. (Hear, 
hear.) I regret thera both, but I peculiarly regret him who is 
associated in my mind with the place to which you have sent me. 
1 shall hardly know the House of Commons without Sir R. Peel. 
(Hear, hear.) On the first evening I took my seat in the House 
of Commons, in 1830, he was then at the head of the Government 



386 RE-EL3CTI0N TO . aKUaMKN'T. 

in thai House. During all the years of my Parliamentary servico 
which followed I scarcely remember one important discussion in 
which he did not bear a part with conspicuous ability. His fig ire 
is now before me ; all the tones of his voice are in my eare, and th* 
pain with which I think I shall never hear them aga.n would be 
embittered by the recollection of some sharp encountera -.vhich took 
place between us, were it not that at the last there w^.s an entire 
and cordial reconciliation, and that only a very few days before his 
death I had the pleasure of receiving from him marks of kindness 
and esteem of which I shall always cherish the recollection. 
(Cheers.) But, gentlemen, it is not only by those changes which 
the natural law of mortality produces, — it is not by the successive 
disappearance of eminent men that the face of the earth has been 
changed during the five years which have elapsed since we met 
here last. Never since the origin of the race have there been five 
years more fertile of great events — five years which have left 
behind them a more awful lesson. We have lived many lives 
in that time. The revolutions of ages have been compressed 
into a few months. France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, — what a 
history has theirs been ! When we met here last there was in 
all of those an outward show of tranquillity ; and there were few, 
*v*-n of the wisest among us, who imagined what wild passions, 
what wild theories, were fermenting under that pacific exterior. 
An obstinate resistance to a reasonable reform — a resistance pro- 
longed but for one day beyond the time — gave the signal for 
the explosion ; and in an instant, from the borders of Russia to 
the Atlantic Ocean, everything was thrown into confusion and 
terror. The streets of some of the greatest capitals of Europe were 
piled up with barricades, and were streaming with civil blood. 
The house of Orleans fled from France — the Pope fled from Home. 
The Emperor of Austria was not safe at Vienna. There were 
popular institutions in Florence — popular institutions at Naples, 
One democratic convention sat at Berlin ; another democratic coa 



ftfc-HLECTiON TO PAULtASiKS't. S8* 

Vetition sat at Frankfort. You remember, I am sure, but too \v«;ll, 
how some of the wisest and most honest friends of reform, men mos 
inclined to look with indulgence on the excesses inseparable from 
the vindication of public liberty by physical force, began to doubt 
and despair of the prospects of mankind. You remember how al' 
sorts of animosity — national, religious, and social — broke forth 
together with the political animosity. You remember how with the 
hatred of discontented subjects towards their Governments wnte 
mingled the hatred of nation to nation, and class to class. In truth, 
for myself, I stood aghast ; and, though naturally of a sanguine dis- 
position, and disposed to look with hope at the progress of mankind 
I did for one moment doubt whether the course of mankind was not 
to be turned back, and whether we were not doomed to pass in oui 
generation from the civilization of the 19th century to the barba 
rism of the 5th. (Hear, hear.) I remembered that Adam Smith 
and Gibbon had told us that there would never be a^ain a destruc- 
tion of civilization by barbarism. That flood, they said, wouid no 
more return to cover the earth ; and they seemed to reason justly, 
for they compared the immense strength of the civilized part of 
the earth with the weakness of those parts which remained savage ; 
and they asked whence were to come the Huns and the Vandals 
that should again destroy civilization ? It had not occurred to 
them that civilization itself might engender the barbarian's who 
should destroy it. (Hear, hear.) It had not occurred to them 
that in the very heart of great capitals — in the very neighbour- 
hood of splendid palaces, and churches, and theatres, and libraries, 
and museums, vice and ignorance might produce a race of Huns 
fiercer than those who marched under Attila, and Vandals more 
bent on destruction than those who followed Genseric. (Great 
applause.) Such was the danger. It passed by, and civilization 
was saved ; but at what a price ! The tide of popular feeling 
turned and ebbed almost as fast as it had riseti. Imprudent and 
obstinate opposition to reasonable demands brought on anarchy, 



888 RE SLfccftdj: to parliament. 

and as soon as men saw the evils of anarchy they fled in terror tt 
crouch at the feet of despotism. To the dominion of mobs arme<i 
with pikes succeeded the sterner and more lasting dominion of 
disciplined armies. The Papacy rose from its debasement ; rose 
more intolerant and insolent than before ; as intolerant and inso- 
lent as it had been in the days of Hildebrand, — intolerant and 
insolent to a degree which dismayed and disappointed those who 
had fondly cherished the hope that its spirit had been mitigated by 
the lapse of years and by the progress of knowledge. (Hear, hear.) 
Through all that vast region where little more than four years 
ago we looked in vain for any stable authority we now look in 
vain for any trace of constitutional freedom. (Hear, hear.) And 
we, gentlemen, in the meantime, have been exempt from both 
those calamities which have wrought ruin all around us. The 
madness of 1848 did not subvert our throne. The reaction which 
followed has not touched our liberties. And why is this ? Why 
has our country, with all the ten plagues raging around us — 
why has she been a land of Goshen ? Everywhere else thunder, 
fire running along the ground, a very grievous storm — such as 
there was none like it since man was on the earth ; yet every- 
thing was tranquil here ; and then again thick night, darkness 
that might be felt ; and yet there was light in all our dwellings. 
We owe this, under the blessing of God, to our wise and nobh 
constitution, the work of many generations of great men. Let 
us profit by the lessons we have received, and let us thank 
God that we profit by the experience of others, and not by our 
own. (Cheers.) Let us prize our constitution. Let us purify 
it, let us amend it, but let us not destroy it. (Great applause.) 
Let us shun extremes, not only because each extreme is in itself 
a positive evil, but also because it has been proved by experi- 
ence that each extreme necessarily engenders its opposite. If 
we love civil and religious freedom, let us in every day of 
danger uphold law and order. If we are zealous for law and 



RE-ELECTION TO I'AKLIAMKNT. 389 

order, let us prize as the best security of that law and order civil 
and religious freedom. (Bear, hear.) Yes, gentlemen, the reasoy 
that our liberties remain in the midst of the general servitude, 
thai the Habeas Corpus Act has never in this island been sus- 
pended, that our press is free, that we have liberty of association, 
that our representative system stands in all its strength, is this, 
that in the year of revolutions we stood firmly by our Govern- 
ment in its peril ; and, if I am asked why we stood by our 
Government in its peril, when men around us were engaged in 
pulling their Governments down, my answer is, that it was because 
we knew that, although our Government was not a perfect 
Government, it was a good Government, that its faults admitted 
of peaceable and legal remedies, that it had never been inflexibly 
opposed to just demands, that we obtained concessions of inesti- 
mable value, not by beating the drum, not by ringing the tocsin, 
not by tearing up the pavement, not by running to the gunsmith*' 
shops to search for arms, but by mere force of reason and public 
opinion. (Cheers.) And, gentlemen, pre-eminent among the 
pacific victories of reason and public opinion, the recollection of 
which chiefly, I believe, carried us safely through the year of 
revolutions, and through the year of counter-revolutions, I would 
place two great reforms, inseparably associated — the one with the 
memory of an illustrious man, who is now beyond the reach of 
envy — the other as closely associated with the name of another 
illustrious man, who is still, and, I hope, long will be, living to be 
the mark for detraction. I speak of the great commercial reform 
of 1846, the work of Sir R. Peel, and of the Reform Bill of 1832. 
whicL was brought in by Lord John Russell. (Loud cheers.) I 
particularly call your attention to those two great reforms, because 
it will, in my opinion, be the especial duty of that House of Com- 
mons in which, by your distinguished favour, I shall have a seat, 
to defend the commercial reform of Sir R. Peel, and to perfect 
8Bd extend the Parliamentary reform of Lord J. Russell. (Ap- 



30G RE-ELECTION TO I'AKLIAMENT. 

plause.) With respect to the commercial reform, although I sa.y 
it will be a sacred duty to defend it, I do not apprehend that we 
shall find the task very difficult. (Hear, hear.) Indeed, I have 
great doubt whether we have reason to apprehend a direct attack 
upon it at all. From the expressions used during the last session, 
and during the late election by Ministers and other adherents, I 
should, I confess, find it utterly impossible to draw any inference 
whatever. They have contradicted each other, and they have 
contradicted themselves. I would engage to produce, selected 
from their speeches, passages which should prove them to be 
Freetraders, and other passages which should prove them to be 
Protectionists. (Laughter.) But, in truth, the only inference that 
can really be drawn from any such passages is as to the question 
whether the persons who made the speeches were addressing a 
town constituency or an agricultural one. (Renewed laughter.) 
I left London in the heat of the elections — for I was forced to 
leave London for Bristol — I left behind me a Tory candidate 
for Westminster and a Tory candidate for Middlesex, proclaiming 
themselves Freetraders. All along my journey through Berk- 
shire and Wiltshire I heard nothing but the cry of Derby and 
Protection ; but when I got to Bristol it was Lord Derby and Free 
Trade again. (Laughter and cheers.) On the one side of the 
Wash, Lord Stanley, the Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign 
Department — a young nobleman of great promise, a young noble- 
man who appears to me to inherit a large portion of his father's 
ability and energy — held language which was universally under- 
stood to indicate that the Government of his father had altogether 
abandoned all thoughts of protection. He was addressing the in- 
habitants of a town ; but on the other side of the Wash the Chan- 
cellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was haranguing the farmers of 
Lincolnshire, and when somebody took it upon him to ask, u What 
will you do, Mr. Christopher, if Lord Derby abandons protection?" 
the hypothesis was so monstrous, so insulting, that he said he 



fttf-ELecfiOK tO PAtlLlAltfiKf. 391 

\voul<l not answer a question so derogatory to Lord Derby. " I 
will stand by Lord Derby," he said, " because T know that Lord 
Derby will stand by protection." Well, then, those opposite 
speeches of two eminent persons, both likely to know the mind of 
Lord Derby on the subject, go forth, and are taken up by the less 
distinguished adherents of the party. The Tory candidate foi 
Leicestershire says — " I will stick by Mr. Christopher ; for, while 
/ou see Mr. Christopher in the Government, protection is safe." 
But, when I go into East Surrey, which is really a subuib of Lon- 
don, and a town constituency, there I find the Tory candidate 
saying, " Never mind Mr. Christopher, I swear by Lord Stanley. 
What should Mr. Christopher know on the subject ; he is not in 
the Cabinet ; he can tell you nothing about it ?" (Hear, hear.) 
And to such a degree was the thing carried, that the different 
members of the party changed their sides and previous professions, 
if they passed from a town constituency to a country constituency, 
or from a country to a town constituency. (Laughter.) Take for 
example Lord Maidstone. He was at one time one of the most 
vehement Protectionists in England, and put forth a small volume, 
which I do not know whether any of you have seen, but as I am 
an elector of Westminster, and as I know he stood for Westmin- 
ster, I thought it my duty to buy it, in order to be informed of his 
opinions. It was entitled Free Trade Hexameters. Of the poeti- 
cal merits of ~<crd Maidstone's hexameters I shall not presume to 
pronounce an opinion. But you may all easily form an opinion 
of them for yourselves by ordering copies ; for I found, when I 
bought mine of the publishers in Bond street, that the supply on 
hand was still considerable. (Laughter and cheers.) But of the 
political merits of Lord Maidstone's hexameters I can speak with 
confidence, and it is impossible to conceive a fiercer or more bitter 
attack — according to the measure of power of the assailant — 
(laughter) — than that which he made on Sir Robert reel's fret 
trade policy. On the other hand, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who is now 



C92 Rfe-EtEcfiott to rAtittAitE*ft. 

Solicitor-General, and who was Solicitor-General under Sir tlotert 
Peel, and voted for all Sir Robert Peel's free trade measures, and 
doubtless from a regard to the public interest, which would have 
suffered greatly by the retirement of so able a lawyer from the 
service of the Crown — he did not think it necessary to lay down 
his office even when Sir Robert Peel brought in his measure 
for free trade in corn. But unfortunately Lord Maidstone 
became a candidate for the city of Westminster, and Sir Fitzroy 
Kelly went to stand for an agricultural county ; so, instantly, 
Lord Maidstone forgets his verse, and Sir Fitzroy Kelly forgets 
his votes. (Laughter and cheers.) Lord Maidstone declares 
himself a convert to the opinions of Sir Robert Peel, and Sir Robert 
Peel's own Solicitor-General stands up and makes a speech, appa- 
rently composed out of Lord Maidstone's hexameters, against f.ee 
trade. (Laughter and renewed cheers.) It is, therefore, gentle- 
men, utterly impossible for me to pretend to foresee, from 4 ± 3 
language held by the members of the Government and their adhe- 
rents, what their conduct will be on the subject of piotection 
Nevertheless, I think that I can confidently say that the g-eat 
reform effected by Sir Robert Peel is perfectly safe. (Applause,) 
I believe that the law which repealed the corn laws stands now on 
a firmer foundation than when it was first passed. We free traders 
are stronger in reason, and we are stronger in numbers. We are 
stronger in reason, because what was only prophecy is now history ; 
and because no person can dispute the salutary effect which the 
repeal of the corn laws has had on our trade and industry. (Loud 
cheers.) We are infinitely stronger in numbers ; for I am sure v )u 
will all recollect the time when an exceedingly strong and foimi- 
dable opposition to the repeal of the corn laws proceeded from 
a class which was most deeply interested in their repeal — I 
mean from the labouring classes. I do not now remember — T 
ought to remember perhaps — whether that opposition p/od licet 1 
much effect here, but I do know that there were many of the 



fcfc-SJLECfiON TO PARLiAMfeNt. SD8 

largest towns in England where the free traders durst not venture 
to call a meeting for the purpose of petitioning against the corn 
laws, for fear of being interrupted by a crowd of working people, 
who were taught by a certain class of demagogues to say that it 
was a question in which working people had no concern — that it 
was purely a capitalist question — that if the poor man got a loaf 
twice as large, the capitalist would give only a sixpence, where he 
formerly gave him a shilling — that it was a matter absolutely 
unimportant to the working classes, naj T , that any change would be 
positively injurious to them. I never had the slightest faith in these 
doctrines myself. Experience even then seemed to me completely 
to confute them. I compared place with place, and 1 found that 
though bread was cheaper in the State of Ohio than in England, 
wages were higher in Ohio than in England. I saw that those 
times when bread was cheapest in England, within my own 
memory, were also the times in which the condition of the labour- 
ing classes was best. (Hear, hear.) But now the experiment has 
been tried in a manner which admits of no dispute; and I should 
be glad to know, if there were now an attempt made to re-establish 
a tax on corn, what demagogue would be able to bring in a crowd 
of working men to hold up their hands in favour of such a tax. 
(Applause.) Thus strong, gentlemen, in reason, and thus strong 
in number, we need, I believe, apprehend no direct attack on the 
principles of Sir Robert Peel's reform. It will be one of the first 
duties of your representatives to be vigilant, that no indirect attack 
shall be made on these principles ; and to take care that in any 
change which may be made in the present system of taxation no 
undue favour shall be shown to any class. With regard to the 
other question which I have mentioned — the question of Parlia- 
mentary reform (cheers) — I think that the time is now near when 
that question will require the gravest consideration — when it will 
oe necessary to reconsider the refcrm of 1832, and to amend it 
temperately and cautiously, but in a large and liberal spirit (Great 

17* 



4 feft-fiiaeKdk to FAftLiAMEKf. 

applause.) I confess that, in my opinion, this revision cannot be 
made with advantage, except by the Ministers of the Crown. I 
greatly doubt whether it will be found possible to carry through 
any well-matured and complete plan of improvement if you hav« 
not the Government heartily with }-ou ; and I must say that from 
the present Administration I can, as to that matter, expect nothing 
good. (Hear, hear.) What I am to expect from them precisely I 
do not know — whether the most obstinate opposition to every 
change, or the most insane and violent change. For if I look tc 
their actions and conduct, I find the gravest reasons for apprehend- 
ing that they may at one time resist the most just demands, and at 
another time, from the merest caprice, propose the wildest innova- 
tions. And I will tell you why I entertain this opinion. I am sorry 
that, in doing so, I must mention the name of a gentleman for 
whom, personally, I have the highest respect — I mean Mr. Wal- 
pole, the Secretary of State for the Home Department. My own 
acquaintance with him is slight, but I know him well by character. 
I believe him to be an honourable, an excellent, an able man. No 
man is more esteemed in private life ; but of his public conduct I 
must claim the right to speak with freedom ; and I do so with the 
less scruple because of that freedom he has himself set me an 
example, and because I am really now speaking on the defensive. 
Mr. Walpole addressed the constituency of Medhurst, and in his 
speech to them he spoke personally of Lord J. Russell as one 
honourable and good man should speak of another, and as, I am 
sure, I always wish to speak of Mr. Walpole. But of Lord J. Rus- 
sell's public conduct he spoke with severity. Chief among the 
faults which he objected io his lordship was this, that he had 
reopened the question of reform. Mr. W'alpole declared himself to 
be opposed on principle to organic change. He justly said that ?f 
an organic change were introduced it should first be deeply medi* 
tated and well weighed, and that nothing should be done without 
thought and care; and he charged Lord John Russell with having 



RE-ELECTION I D PARLIAMENT. 'Si)o 

neglected these precepts of pridence. I was perfectly thunder- 
struck when I read his speech, for I recollected that the most 
violent and democratic change in our representative system that 
ever was proposed within the memory of the oldest man had been 
proposed but a few weeks before by this same Mr. Walpole, as Uig 
organ of the present Government. (Laughter and applause.) Do 
you remember the history of the Militia Uill ? (A renewed burst 
of laughter and applause.) In general, when a great reform in 
Parliament is to be brought in, the Minister announces it some 
weeks before. He gives notice that he means to propose a change 
in the representative system. There is a great attendance, and the 
most painful anxiety to know what he is going to propose. I well 
remember, for I was present, with what breathless suspense 600 
persons waited, on the 1st of March, 1832, to hear Lord John Rus- 
sell announce his Reform Bill. But what his Reform Bill to the 
bill of Mr. Secretary Walpole of the Derby Administration ! 
(Cheers.) At the end of a night, in the easiest way possible, with- 
out the smallest notice, he proposed a clause to the tail of the 
Militia Bill to the effect, that every man who served in the militia 
for two years should have a vote in the county. (Hear, hear, and 
cheers.) What is the number of those voters who were to be 
entitled to vote in this way for a county ? The militia of England 
is to consist of 80,000, and the term of service is to be five years. 
In 10 years the number will be 160,000; in 20 years, 320,000 ; 
and in 25 years, 400,000. Some of these will, of course, have died 
off in 25 years, though the lives are picked lives — remarkably 
good lives. How many I do not know, but any actuary will easily 
calculate it for you. I should say in round numbers, that you will 
have, when the system is in operation, for a generation, ai addition 
of about 300,000 to the county constituent bodies — that is to say, 
6,000 voters on the average to be added to every county in Eng- 
land and Wales. (Hear, hear.) That is an immense addition ; 
and what is the qualification? Whv, the first qualification i* 



396 RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT. 

youth. They are not to be above a certain age ; but the nearei 
you can get them to 18 the better. (Laughter and applause.) 
The second qualification is poverty. They are all to be persons to 
whom a shilling a-day will be an object. (Renewed laughter and 
applause.) The third qualification is ignorance ; for I venture to 
say that if ever you take the trouble to observe the appearance of 
those young fellows who follow the recruiting sergeant in tin 
streets, you will at once say that, among our labouring classes, thev 
are 1 not the most educated — they are not the most intelligent. 
(Laughter and cheers.) That they are brave stout fellows, I have 
not the least doubt. Lord Hardinge tells me that he never saw a 
finer set of young fellows ; and I have not the slightest doubt that, 
if necessary, after a few years' training, they will be found standing 
up for our firesides and hearths against the best disciplined soldiers 
the Continent can produce. But these are not the qualifications 
of men whom we want to choose our legislators. (Cheers.) The 
habits that generally send young men from the ploughtail to the 
army are rather a disposition to idleness. (Hear, hear.) Oh ! but 
there is another qualification which I have forget, and that is, that 
they must be five feet two. (Loud laughter and cheers.) This 
a qualification for a county voter ! Only think of measuring a 
man for the franchise! (Continued laughter and applause.) Well, 
this comes from a Conservative Government, — a measure which 
would swamp all the county constituents in England with people 
who possess the Derby- Walpole qualifications ; — that is to say 
youth, poverty, ignorance, a roving disposition, and five feet two 
(Continued laughter and applause.) Why, what have people who 
have brought in such a measure as this to talk about — I do not 
say Lord J. Russell's imprudence — but about the imprudence of 
Ernest Jones and other people who propose universal suffrage ? At 
all events, they give wealth with poverty, and knowledge with 
ignorance, and mature age with youth. But to make a qualifica 
tion compounded of disqualifications is a thing I really do believe 



RE-ELECTION TO TAKLIAMENT. 39*7 

was never heard of, except in the case of this Conservative reform. 
(" Hear, hear," and cheers.) This prodigious proposition was 
made, I believe, in a very thin House, but next day the House 
was full enough — everybody having come down to know what was 
coming. One asked, why not this ? and another, why not that ? 
Are all the regular troops to have a vote, all the policemen, and 
all the sailors? for, if you take ploughboys of 21, what possible 
class of honest Englishmen and Scotchmen could you have the 
slightest pretence to exclude ? But up gets the Home Secretary, 
and states that the thing had not been sufficiently considered, that 
some of his colleagues were not satisfied, and that he would not 
press the thing. Well, I must say that if it had happened to me 
fi-st to propose such a reform, and at the next sitting of the House 
t- withdraw it, because it had not been well considered, I do think 
that to the end of my life I never should talk about the exceeding 
<*vil of reopening the question of reform ; I would never read any 
other man a lecture on the extreme prudence and caution with 
which he should approach questions of organic change. (Cheers 
and laughter.) I repeat, that if I am to judge from the language 
of the present Ministers, taken in connexion with this solitary 
instance of legislative skill in the way of reform, I am utterly at a 
loss what to expect ; but what I do expect is a pertinacious, 
vehement, provoking opposition to what is most safe and reason- 
able, and then that, in some moment of fear or caprice, they will 
bring in a plan and fling it on the table in a fit of desperation or 
levity — a plan which is enough to loosen the foundations of 
society. (Hear, and cheers.) For my own part, I think the 
question of Parliamentary reform is one which must soon be taken 
up, but it ought to be taken up by the Government ; and I hope, 
before long, to see in office a Ministry which will take it up in 
earnest. (Loud cheers.) I dare say you will not suspect me of 
-laying so from any interested feeling. The truth is that in no 
case whatever shall I again be a member of any Ministry. Paring 



398 RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT. 

what may remain of my public life, I shall be the servant of none 
but you. (Loud and prolonged cheering.) I have nothing to ask 
of any Government, except tnat protection which every Govern- 
ment owes to every faithful an.i loyal subject of the Queen. But, 
as I live, I do hope to see in office before long a Ministry which 
will treat this great question as it should be treated. It will be 
the duty of that Ministry to revise the distribution of power. It 
will be the duty of that Ministry to consider whether small 
constituencies, notoriously corrupt, and proved to be corrupt — 
such, for example, as Harwich — ought to retain the power of 
sending members to Parliament. It will be the duty of such a 
Ministry to consider whether such constituent bodies, even les3 
notoriously corrupt, ought to have in the councils of the empire a 
share as great as the West Riding of York, and twice as great as 
that of the county of Perth. (Hear, hear.) It will be the duty 
of such a Ministry to consider whether it be not possible, without 
the smallest danger to peace, law, and order, to extend the elective 
franchise to classes of the community which do not now possess 
it. As to universal suffrage — on that subject you already know 
my opinions, and I now come before you with those opinions 
strengthened by everything which, since that period, has passed in 
Europe. We have seen by the clearest of all proofs that universal 
suffrage, even united with secret voting, is no security against the 
establishment of arbitrary power. (Cheers.) But, gentlemen, I 
do look forward, and at no very remote period, to the extension 
of the franchise, further than I admit I once thought would be 
safe or practicable. (Hear, hear.) I believe that such an extension 
will, by the course of events, be brought about in the very best and 
happiest way. Perhaps I may be sanguine, but I think that good 
times are coming for the labouring classes of this country. I do 
not entertain that hope because I expect that Fourierism, or St, 
Simonianism, or Socialism, or any of those other "isms" for 
wliJch the plain English word is " robbery," will prevail. I know 



RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT. 399 

tliat such schemes only aggravate the misery which they pretend 
to relieve. I know it is possible, by such legislation, to make the 
rich poor, but I know it is utterly impossible to make the poor 
rich. (Hear, hear.) But I do believe and hope that the progress 
of experimental science, the free intercourse of nation with nation, 
the unrestricted influx of commodities from countries where they 
are cheap, and the unrestricted efflux of labour towards countries 
where it is dear, will soon produce, and are beginning to produce, 
a great and most blessed social revolution. (Cheers.) You know, 
gentlemen, I need not tell you, that in those colonies which have 
been planted by our race — and, when I say colonies, I speak as 
w r ell of those which have separated from us as those which still 
remain united to us — you know that in our colonies the condition 
of the labouring man has long been far more prosperous than in 
any part of the old world. And why is this ? Some persons tell 
you that the people of Pennsylvania or New England are better 
oft' than the people of the Old World, because the United States 
have a republican form of government. But we know that the 
labourers of Pennsylvania and New England were more prosperous 
than the people of the Old World when Pennsylvania and New 
England were as loyal as any part of the dominions of George I., 
George II., or George III. ; and we know that in Van Diemen's 
Land, in New Zealand, in Australasia, in New Brunswick, in Cana- 
da, the subjects of Her Majesty are as prosperous as they could be 
under the government of a president. The cause, gentlemen, is 
different. The cause is, that in these new countries, where there 
is a boundless extent of fertile land, nothing is easier than for the 
labourer to pass from the place which is overstocked to the place 
which is understocked ; and that thus he who moves and he who 
stays always have enough. This it is which keeps up the pros- 
perity of the Atlantic States of the Union. They force their 
population back to Ohio, across the Ohio to the Mississippi, and 
beyond the Mississippi. Everywhere the desert is receding before 



400 RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT. 

the advancement of the flood of human life and civilization ; and, 
in the meantime, those who are left behind find abundance, and 
never endure those privations which in old countries too often 
befall the labouring classes. And why has not the condition of 
our labourers been equally fortunate ? Simply, as I believe, or 
account of the great distance which separates our country from 
the new, unoccupied, and uncultivated, fertile part of the world, 
and on account of the expense of traversing that distance. Science, 
however, has abridged, and is abridging that distance — science has 
diminished, and is diminishing that expense. Already New Zea- 
land is nearer for all practical purposes to England than New 
England was to the Puritans who fled thither from the tyranny 
of Laud. Already the coasts of North America, Halifax, Boston, 
and New York, are nearer to England than, within the memory 
of persons now living, the Island of Skye and the county of 
Donegal were to London. Already emigration is beginning, if I 
rightly understand, to produce the same effect here which it has 
produced on the Atlantic States of the Union. . And do not 
imagine that our countryman who goes abroad is altogether lost 
to us. Even if he go from under the dominion and protection 
of the English flag, and settle himself among a kindred people, 
still he is not altogether lost to us, for, under the benignant system 
of free trade, he will still remain bound to us by close ties. (Cheers.) 
If he ceases to be a neighbour, he is still a benefactor and a 
customer. Go where he may, if you will but uphold that system 
inviolate, it is for us that he is turning the forests into cornfields 
on the banks of the Mississippi ; it is for us he is tending his sheep 
and preparing his fleeces in the heart of Australia, and in the 
meantime it is from us he receives the commodities which are 
produced with vast advantage in an old society, where great 
masses of capital are accumulated. (Cheers.) His candlesticks 
and his pots and pans come from Birmingham, his knives from 
Sheffield, the light cotton jacket which he wears in summer comes 



RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT. 401 

from Manchester, and the good cloth coat which he wears in 
winter conies from Leeds ; and in return he sends us back what 
lie produces in what was once a wilderness — the good flour out of 
which is made the large loaf which the Englishman divides among 
his children. (Loud cheers.) The right hon. gentleman here 
began to show considerable symptoms of exhaustion : and, after 
pausing a moment, he said, — I believe that it is in these changes 
we shall see the best solution of the question of the franchise — not 
so much by lowering the franchise to the level of the great mass 
of the community as by raising, in a time very short in the 
existence of a nation, the great mass up to the level of a reasonable 
and moderate franchise. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) I feel that I 
must stop. I had meditated on some other things upon which I 
intended to address you. I had meant to say something about 
the ballot, to which, as you know, I have always been favourable ; 
something about triennial Parliaments, to which, as you know, I 
have always been honestly opposed ; I had meant to say some- 
thing about your University tests (hear, hear) — something about 
the religious equality movement in Ireland ; but I feel I cannot 
well proceed. (Cheers.) I have only strength to thank you again, 
from the very bottom of my heart, for the great honour which you 
have done me in appointing me, without solicitation, to the 
distinguished post of one of your representatives. I am proud of 
our connexion, and I shall try to act in such a manner that you 
may not be ashamed of it. 

The right hon. gentleman resumed his seat amid loud, general, 
and reiterated applause. 

On the motion of Mr. R. Macfarlane, advocate, a vote of thanks 
was tendered to Mr. Black for his conduct in the chair. 

Mr. Black briefly replied, and concluded by proposing three 
cheers for Mr. Macaulav, which were given with the greatest 
cordiality, after which the meeting separated. The proceedings 
lasted little more than an hour. 



